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Cloud cuckoo land : a novel
by Anthony Doerr
Follows four young dreamers and outcasts through time and space, from 1453 Constantinople to the future, as they discover resourcefulness and hope amidst peril in the new novel by the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of All the Light We Cannot See.
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Middlemarch : a study of provincial life
by George Eliot
Long regarded as one of the greatest of the great English-language novels, Middlemarch by George Eliot has endured as the archetypal Victorian novel and an eternally resonant exploration of society and the individual. Centuries removed from the world of the landed gentry in 1830s England, the characters of Middlemarch remain as exquisitely drawn and deeply alive as any in literature: the pedantic, obsessive Reverend Casaubon, the idealistic Dr. Lydgate, and the spirited, striving Dorothea Brooke. A novel of marriage, Eliot's "study of Provincial Life" is also a strikingly fresh commentary on scientific and technological change, cultural and class divides, and the upheavals of a rural community experiencing global transformation.
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A visit from the Goon Squad
by Jennifer Egan
Working side-by-side for a record label, former punk rocker Bennie. Salazar and the passionate Sasha hide illicit secrets from one another while interacting with a motley assortment of equally troubled people from 1970s San Francisco to the post-war future
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Jazz
by Toni Morrison
In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joes wife, Violet, attacks the girls corpse. This passionate, profound story of love and obsession brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of black urban life.
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Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
From the acclaimed author of "The remains of the day" and "When we were orphans", a moving new novel that subtly reimagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love. As a child, Kathy, now thirty-one years old, lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed, even comforted by their isolation.
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Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
For 12,000 years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future - to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save humankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire - both scientists and scholars - and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.
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Pamela, or, Virtue rewarded
by Samuel Richardson
One of the most spectacular successes of the flourishing literary marketplace of eighteenth-century London, Pamela also marked a defining moment in the emergence of the modern novel. In the words of one contemporary, it divided the world "into two different Parties, Pamelists and Anti-pamelists," even eclipsing the sensational factional politics of the day. Preached for its morality, and denounced as pornography in disguise, it vividly describes a young servant's long resistance to the attempts of her predatory master to seduce her. Written in the voice of its low-born heroine, Pamela is not only a work of pioneering psychological complexity, but also a compelling and provocative study of power and its abuse.
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Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
Widely regarded as Dickens’s masterpiece, Bleak House centers on the generations-long lawsuit Jarndyce and Jarndyce, through which “whole families have inherited legendary hatreds.” Focusing on Esther Summerson, a ward of John Jarndyce, the novel traces Esther’s romantic coming-of-age and, in classic Dickensian style, the gradual revelation of long-buried secrets, all set against the foggy backdrop of the Court of Chancery. Mixing romance, mystery, comedy, and satire, Bleak House limns the suffering caused by the intricate inefficiency of the law.
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Fingersmith
by Sarah Waters
Growing up as a foster child among a family of thieves, orphan Sue Trinder hopes to pay back that kindness by playing a key role in a swindle scheme devised by their leader, Gentleman, who is planning to con a fortune out of the naive Maud Lily, but Sue's growing pity for their helpless victim could destroy the plot. By the author of Tipping the Velvet.
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Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
by Gabrielle Zevin
Embarking on a legendary collaboration launching them to stardom, two friends, intimates since childhood, have the world at their feet until they discover that their success, brilliance and money wont protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of the heart.
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Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore
by Robin Sloan
After a layoff during the Great Recession sidelines his tech career, Clay Jannon takes a job at the titular bookstore in San Francisco, and soon realizes that the establishment is a facade for a strange secret.
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Appleseed : a novel
by Matt Bell
Two supernatural brothers who plant an apple orchard in eighteenth-century Ohio reel from the unforeseen circumstances after climate change ravages the earth and centuries later leaves the company they founded unfairly owning all the worlds resources.
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Pride and prejudice
by Jane Austen
With its wit, its social precision and, above all, its irresistible heroine, Pride and Prejudice has proved one of the most enduringly popular novels in the English language.
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I capture the castle
by Dodie Smith
A reissue of a classic story by the best-selling author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians follows the experiences of 17-year-old Cassandra, who records in her journal her family's struggles with poverty and her experiences with an all-consuming first love.
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Trust
by Hernán Díaz
Told from the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction, this unrivaled novel about money, power, intimacy and perception is centered around the mystery of how the Rask family acquired their immense fortune in 1920s-1930s New York City.
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The actual star : a novel
by Monica Byrne
Through the epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this book takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents where it demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate.
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Still life
by Sarah Winman
In 1944 Tuscany, as Allied troops advance, a young English soldier has a chance encounter with a middle-aged art historian with whom he finds a kindred spirit and who sets him off on a course of events that will shape his life for the next four decades.
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The book of Koli
by M. R. Carey
The Book of Koli is the unforgettable story of a young boy struggling to find his place in a world where nature itself has turned against humanity: Everything that lives hates us... Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will. Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He believes the first rule of survival is that you don't venture too far beyond the walls. He's wrong.
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Autumn
by Ali Smith
A debut installment in a series about aging, time, love and the nature of stories examines the dynamics of pop culture, meditation and harvests in a world growing more bordered and exclusive. By the Booker Prize-nominated author of How to Be Both.
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All the light we cannot see : a novel
by Anthony Doerr
A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast. By the award-winning author of About Grace.
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Life after life : a novel
by Kate Atkinson
Follows the experiences of a woman, who, after being born on a snowy night in 1910, repeatedly dies and reincarnates into the same life to correct missteps and ultimately save the world
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Memory wall : stories
by Anthony Doerr
The O. Henry Prize-winning author of The Shell Collector presents a volume of short tales that includes the title work, a McSweeney's-commissioned piece, as well as additional stories that span four continents and follow a theme of life's subtle grandeur.
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My name is Red
by Orhan Pamuk
A furor erupts when the Sultan hires a group of artists, under the direction of Master Uncle, to illuminate a great book in the European style to celebrate his reign at a time in which all figurative art is considered Islamic heresy, but the situation becomes worse when one of the miniaturists vanishes, in a mystery set against the backdrop of religious repression in sixteenth-century Istanbul.
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About Grace : a novel
by Anthony Doerr
Possessing an unsettling ability to predict random future events, Anchorage resident David Winkler foresees his infant daughter's drowning death and travels thousands of miles to Ohio and the Caribbean to prevent the tragedy, learning about human frailty and the importance of everyday miracles along the way.
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The winter's tale
by William Shakespeare
A freshly edited text of the drama includes explanatory notes on pages opposite the text of the play, an introduction to the play's language, an annotated bibliography, illustrations of the play's trappings, and a critical essay.
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The shell collector : stories
by Anthony Doerr
A debut collection of evocative short fiction explores the complex mysteries of the human condition--grief, transformation, fractured relationships, and mending hearts--in a volume that includes the title story, "The Hunter's Wife," and "For a Long Time This Was Griselda's Story," about two Idaho sisters struggling to come to terms with their diverse paths in life
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The dazzle of day
by Molly Gloss
A group of people who set out from Earth to settle a new world and literally grew up on their ship must reconcile the society and culture they have developed in space with the environment of their new home planet.
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