Best Epistolary Fiction

A #1 New York Times best seller for more than a year, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life. His first film, The Four Corners of Nowhere , premiered at Sundance Film Festival.

A #1 New York Times best seller for more than a year, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life. His first film, The Four Corners of Nowhere , premiered at Sundance Film Festival.

This haunting novel about the dilemma of passivity vs. passion marks the stunning debut of a provocative new voice in contemporary fiction: The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Through Charlie, Stephen Chbosky has created a deeply affecting coming-of-age story, a powerful novel that will spirit you back to those wild and poignant roller coaster days known as growing up. What is most notable about this funny, touching, memorable first novel from Stephen Chbosky is the resounding accuracy with which the author captures the voice of a boy teetering on the brink of adulthood. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes to someone of undisclosed name, age, and gender, a stylistic technique that adds to the heart-wrenching earnestness saturating this teen's story. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. With the help of a teacher who recognizes his wisdom and intuition, and his two friends, seniors Samantha and Patrick, Charlie mostly manages to avoid the depression he feels creeping up like kudzu.

A #1 New York Times best seller for more than a year, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults (2000) and Best Book for Reluctant Readers (2000), and with millions of copies in print, this novel for teen readers (or “wallflowers” of more-advanced age) will make you laugh, cry, and perhaps feel nostalgic for those moments when you, too, tiptoed onto the dance floor of life. What is most notable about this funny, touching, memorable first novel from Stephen Chbosky is the resounding accuracy with which the author captures the voice of a boy teetering on the brink of adulthood. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes to someone of undisclosed name, age, and gender, a stylistic technique that adds to the heart-wrenching earnestness saturating this teen's story. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. With the help of a teacher who recognizes his wisdom and intuition, and his two friends, seniors Samantha and Patrick, Charlie mostly manages to avoid the depression he feels creeping up like kudzu. --Brangien Davis A trite coming-of-age novel that could easily appeal to a YA readership, filmmaker Chbosky's debut broadcasts its intentions with the publisher's announcement that ads will run on MTV. In the end we learn the root of Charlie's psychological problems, and we confront, with him, the coming rigors of 11th grade, ever hopeful that he'll find a suitable girlfriend and increase his vocabulary.

Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share. “Sprawling, stirring, like the richest of stories, and played out on a canvas of heroism and tragedy, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is like one of those iconic World War II black and white photos: a face of hope and tears, the story of a small life that ended up mattering in a big way.” —Andrew Gross, New York Times bestselling author of The One Man. “Action, adventure, love, war, and an epic hero—all set against the backdrop of one of history's darkest moments—Mark Sullivan's Beneath a Scarlet Sky has everything one can ask for in an exceptional World War II novel.” —Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author of Playing with Fire. Mark has received numerous awards for his writing, including the WHSmith Fresh Talent Award, and his works have been named a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year.

People say Beartown is finished. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman's latest will resonate a long time.” ( Kirkus Reviews ). While the story is dark at times, love, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and family shine through ultimately offering hope and even redemption.” ( Publishers Weekly ). "The sentimentally savvy Backman (A Man Called Ove, 2014) takes a sobering and solemn look at the ways alienation and acceptance, ethics and emotions nearly destroy a small town and young people." Backman cements his standing as a writer of astonishing depth and proves that he also has very broad range plus the remarkable ability to make you understand the feelings of each of a dozen different characters. The story is fully packed with wise insights into the human experience causing characters and readers to ponder life’s great question of who we are, what we hope to be and how we should lead our lives.” ( The Washington Times ).

The urbane authority that Vladimir Nabokov brought to every word he ever wrote, and the ironic amusement he cultivated in response to being uprooted and politically exiled twice in his life, never found fuller expression than in Pale Fire published in 1962 after the critical and popular success of Lolita had made him an international literary figure. "This centaur-work, half poem, half prose…is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century." "Of all [Nabokov's] inventions, Pale Fire is the wildest, the funniest and the most earnest.

A Gentleman in Moscow.

Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles--and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined. John Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times--winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp . In 2000, he won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for The Cider House Rules --a film with seven Academy Award nominations. I’ve not read a novel wherein medicine, the practice of it, is made as germane to the storytelling process, to the overall narrative, as the author manages to make it happen here.

But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or to redemption. Based on one of America's most notorious real-life scandals--in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country--Lisa Wingate's riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong. "Lisa Wingate takes an almostunthinkable chapter in our nation's history and weaves a tale of enduring power.That Georgia Tann and her Memphis Tennessee Children's Home Society couldactually exist, unraveling the lives of countless children, stealing their pastsand changing their futures, will give you chills. - Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of Circlingthe Sun "A powerful taleof family, of sisters, of secrets kept and secrets shared. - Susan Meissner, author of Secrets of a Charmed Life " Before We Were Yours , Lisa Wingate's heart-racing tale of a family ripped apart by the TennesseeChildren's Home Society scandal, r. ang so true I couldn't sleep until I knewtheir fate. . [Lisa] Wingate is a master-storyteller, and you’ll find yourself pulled along as she reveals the wake of terror and heartache that is Georgia Tann’s legacy.” — Parade. It is almost a cliché to say a book is ‘lovingly written’ but that phrase applies clearly to Lisa Wingate’s latest novel, Before We Were Yours . This story about children taken from their parents through kidnapping or subterfuge and then placed for adoption, for a price, clearly pours out of Wingate’s heart. “This story is heartfelt and genuine, especially as Wingate explores the idea of home and family from a youngster’s point of view.” — Historical Novels Review. “Lisa Wingate takes an almost unthinkable chapter in our nation’s history and weaves a tale of enduring power. But the real feat of this stirring novel is how deeply Wingate plunges us into the heart and mind of twelve-year-old river gypsy Rill Foss. Rill’s utterly singular voice will stay with you long after the last page is turned, as will Wingate’s courage to follow her anywhere. Vivid and affecting.” —Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of Circling the Sun. I’m still basking in the afterglow, in shock at the true-crime elements, in awe at the journey of these characters who seem to have immortal souls.” —Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.

Now, with the opportunity to spy for the Allies inside the German High Command, Pino endures the horrors of the war and the Nazi occupation by fighting in secret, his courage bolstered by his love for Anna and for the life he dreams they will one day share. “Sprawling, stirring, like the richest of stories, and played out on a canvas of heroism and tragedy, Beneath a Scarlet Sky is like one of those iconic World War II black and white photos: a face of hope and tears, the story of a small life that ended up mattering in a big way.” —Andrew Gross, New York Times bestselling author of The One Man. Sullivan shows us war as it really is, with all its complexities, conflicting loyalties, and unresolved questions, but most of all, he brings us the extraordinary figure of Pino Lella, whose determination to live con smania —with passion—saved him.” —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Suspicion and The Switch.

Louise Erdrich, the New York Times bestselling, National Book Award-winning author of LaRose and The Round House , paints a startling portrait of a young woman fighting for her life and her unborn child against oppressive forces that manifest in the wake of a cataclysmic event. Though she wants to tell the adoptive parents who raised her from infancy, Cedar first feels compelled to find her birth mother, Mary Potts, an Ojibwe living on the reservation, to understand both her and her baby’s origins. A chilling dystopian novel both provocative and prescient, Future Home of the Living God is a startlingly original work from one of our most acclaimed writers: a moving meditation on female agency, self-determination, biology, and natural rights that speaks to the troubling changes of our time. “Erdrich stuns again in FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD…She grounds her story in a kind of sharply drawn reality that makes the standard tropes of dark futurism that much more unnerving…Erdrich is a writer whose words carry a spiritual weight far beyond science, or fiction.” ( Entertainment Weekly ). “A page-turner…with lucid language and gripping scenes…Among the book’s many strengths are its urgency and suspense as well as the immediacy of its voice…Erdrich’s sense of humor manages to make the darkness fresh and plausible…She applies her stinging perspective to remind readers how much has happened, how much keeps happening and how far humans have yet to go.” ( Chicago Tribune ).

Desperate to know whether he has an heir, the dying magnate hires Bosch, the only person he can trust. At the same time, unable to leave cop work behind completely, he volunteers as an investigator for a tiny cash-strapped police department and finds himself tracking a serial rapist who is one of the most baffling and dangerous foes he has ever faced. Swift, unpredictable, and thrilling, The Wrong Side of Goodbye shows that Michael Connelly "continues to amaze with his consistent skill and sizzle" ( Cleveland Plain Dealer ). Few mystery novelists make background facts and simple descriptions sing the way this writer does. And no writer exploits Los Angeles - its geography, its historical power wars, its celebrity culture, its lore - as compellingly as Connelly....he must be read." "If any novelist is worthy to walk once more through the front door of Raymond Chandler's iconic Sternwood mansion, it's Michael Connelly. For over two decades, Connelly has been brilliantly updating and enlarging the possibilities of the classic L.A. hard-boiled novel, first bestowed upon the world in 1939 with Chandler's debut, The Big Sleep . Moving effortlessly between Bosch's private and public cases, he ratchets up the tension...pulling off in the final few chapters a California noir sleight of hand that would make Ross Macdonald envious." "In each novel, Connelly has dug deeper into Harry's psyche, as he skillfully does in The Wrong Side of Goodbye ....Connelly's melding of the police procedural, private detective novel and intense character study remains solid. "....it is immensely satisfying to see Bosch's sustained and deepened passion for his mission- "Everybody count or nobody counts" - undiminished by age or circumstance, even as a younger generation of detectives of all colors and orientations share the stage to carry on the work that has given Bosch, and this series, such an enduring appeal.

Mackenzie Allen Philips' youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. "The Shack" cuts through the cliches of both religion and bad writing to reveal something compelling and beautiful about life's integral dance with the Divine. Through my tears and cheers, I have been indeed transformed by the tender mercy with which William Paul Young opened the veil that too often separated me from God and from myself. With every page, the complicated do's and don't that distort a relationship into a religion were washed away as I understood Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the first time in my life.

Now a major motion picture Stephen King’s terrifying, classic #1 New York Times bestseller, “a landmark in American literature” ( Chicago Sun-Times )—about seven adults who return to their hometown to confront a nightmare they had first stumbled on as teenagers…an evil without a name: It . But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Moving back and forth between 1958 and 1985, the story tells of seven children in a small Maine town who discover the source of a series of horrifying murders. But there is enough material in this epic for several novels and stories, and the excessive length and numerous interrelated flashbacks eventually become wearying and annoying.

People say Beartown is finished. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman's latest will resonate a long time.” ( Kirkus Reviews ). While the story is dark at times, love, sacrifice, and the bonds of friendship and family shine through ultimately offering hope and even redemption.” ( Publishers Weekly ). "The sentimentally savvy Backman (A Man Called Ove, 2014) takes a sobering and solemn look at the ways alienation and acceptance, ethics and emotions nearly destroy a small town and young people." Backman cements his standing as a writer of astonishing depth and proves that he also has very broad range plus the remarkable ability to make you understand the feelings of each of a dozen different characters. The story is fully packed with wise insights into the human experience causing characters and readers to ponder life’s great question of who we are, what we hope to be and how we should lead our lives.” ( The Washington Times ).

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Yet Santiago is too old and infirm to partake of the gun-toting machismo that disfigured much of the author's later work: "The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. Just before it was dark, as they passed a great island of Sargasso weed that heaved and swung in the light sea as though the ocean were making love with something under a yellow blanket, his small line was taken by a dolphin. If a younger Hemingway had written this novella, Santiago most likely would have towed the enormous fish back to port and posed for a triumphal photograph--just as the author delighted in doing, circa 1935.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land. In one such town he is given a $50 dollar gold piece to ferry a kidnapped girl back to what’s left of her family--her parents and sister having been murdered by members of the Kiowa tribe--who spare the then 6-year-old and raise her as one of their own. Thus begins a seemingly ill-advised but transformative road trip where the mismatched pair eventually form and uneasy truce, then a not-so begrudging alliance, and finally something more wonderful that neither Captain nor kid could have imagined.