aNobii: News from [person name]'s shelf

Life of Pi

Tue, 2 Oct 2012 22:58:54 PST

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Life of Pi is at once a realistic, rousing adventure and a meta-tale of survival that explores the redemptive power of storytelling and the transformative nature of fiction.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close MTI

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:24:59 PST

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At Home

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:28:36 PST

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Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:35:01 PST

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A bona fide publishing phenomenon, Lynne Truss's now classic #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes its paperback debut after selling over 3 million copies worldwide in hardcover. We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now text messages, ...

And Then There Were None

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:32:10 PST

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First, there were ten--a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal--and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. One by one they fall prey. B ...

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:27:22 PST

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From Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, comes a comedic romp through an unpredictable world of mystery, love, and time travel... Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump. It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Na ...

大設計

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:23:22 PST

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　　當人們凝視無垠的穹蒼時，總會湧現種種問題：如何才能了解自己所存在的這個世界？宇宙如何運作？真實的本質是什麼？萬物從何而來？宇宙需要造物主嗎？欲了解宇宙最深處的奧祕，不僅需要知道宇宙如何運作，更要探究為什麼：為什麼世上有東西而非空無一物？我們為什麼存在？為什麼宰制宇宙的是M理論這套特定的法則而非其他法則？這是對生命、宇宙和天地萬物的終極大問，本書將試圖提供這些問題的答案。　　宇宙何時起源又是如何起源的呢？為什麼人類生在這裡？為什麼世界上並非空無一物？真實的本質到底為何？為什麼自然法則如此恰到好處，讓人類這等生物得以存在？最後一個問題是，這種看似天衣無縫的「大設計」，究竟證明宇宙是蒙主眷顧而創造一切，抑或科學能提供另一種解釋呢？　　有關宇宙與生命起源的根本問題，向來歸屬於哲學範疇，如今卻已成為科學家、哲學家與神學家百家爭鳴之領域。在這本最新力作之中，霍金與曼羅迪諾對於宇宙最深奧的 ...

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:19:37 PST

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Freedom

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:15:15 PST

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Revolutionary Road

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 11:19:28 PST

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The rediscovery and rejuvenation of Richard Yates's 1961 novel Revolutionary Road is due in large part to its continuing emotional and moral resonance for an early 21st-century readership. April and Frank Wheeler are a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in a prosperous Connecticut suburb in the mid-1950s. However, like the characters in John Updike's similarly themed ...

The Lost Symbol

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 11:14:32 PST

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In the stunning follow-up to the global phenomenon The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown demonstrates once again why he is the world's most popular thriller writer. The Lost Symbol is a masterstroke of storytelling that finds famed symbologist Robert Langdon in a deadly race through a real-world labyrinth of codes, secrets, and unseen truths... all under the watchful eye of Brown's most terrifying villain ...

Push

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:47:03 PST

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Relentless, remorseless, and inspirational, this "horrific, hope-filled story" (Newsday) is certain to haunt a generation of readers. Precious Jones, 16 years old and pregnant by her father with her second child, meets a determined and highly radical teacher who takes her on a journey of transformation and redemption.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:45:00 PST

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A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare's passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Ni ...

Julie and Julia

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:37:51 PST

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Julie Powell, nearing thirty and trapped in a dead-end secretarial job, resolves toreclaim her life by cooking in the span of a single year, every one of the...

The Lovely Bones

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:30:26 PST

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Susie Salmon speaks to us from heaven, because she was murdered when she was 14 years old by a man who lived in the same neighbourhood. Over the years, her friends and siblings grow up, fall in love and do the things she has never had the chance to do. But life is not quite finished with Susie yet.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:23:49 PST

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Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family. There was no corpse, no witnesses, no evidence. But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone in her own family - the deeply dysfunctional Vanger clan. Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomqvist is hired to investigate, but when he links Harriet's disappearance ...

The Girl Who Played with Fire

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:23:22 PST

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Lisbeth Salander is a wanted woman. Two Millennium journalists about to expose the truth about the sex trade in Sweden are brutally murdered, and Salander's prints are on the weapon. Her history of unpredictable and vengeful behaviour makes her an official danger to society - but no-one can find her anywhere. Meanwhile, Mikael Blomkvist, editor-in-chief of Millennium, will not believe what he hea ...

Angels & Demons

Mon, 25 May 2009 18:35:40 PST

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An ancient secret brotherhood. A devastating new weapon of destruction. An unthinkable target. World-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a cryptic symbol seared into the chest of a murdered physicist. What he discovers is unimaginable: a deadly vendetta against the Catholic Church by a centuries-old underground organization -- the ...

Kafka on the Shore

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:31:20 PST

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It

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:02:31 PST

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They were just kids when they stumbled upon the hidden horror of their hometown. Now, as adults, none of them can withstand the force that has drawn them all back to Derry, Maine, to face the nightmare without end, and the evil without a name.

Mary, Mary

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:22:35 PST

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Alex Cross travels to Los Angeles to hunt for a killer more brutal and ambitious than he's ever encountered--a woman who has it in for Hollywood's hottest players. Is this the plan of an obsessed fan or a spurned actor, or is it part of something much more frightening? FBI agent Alex Cross is on vacation with his family at Disneyland when he gets a call from the Director. A well-known actress ...

The Nanny Diaries

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:18:40 PST

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Wanted: One young woman to take care of four-year-old boy. Must be cheerful, enthusiastic and selfless-bordering on masochistic Must relish sixteen-hour shifts with a deliberately nap-deprived pre-schooler Must love getting thrown up on, literally and figuratively, by everyone in his family Must enjoy the delicious anticipation of ridiculously erratic pay Mostly, must love being treated lik ...

Persuasion

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:23:13 PST

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'All the privilege I claim for my own sex...is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.'. Anne Elliot's heartfelt words strike the keynote of Jane Austen's last completed novel. It features a heroine older and wiser than her predecessors in earlier books, and its tone is more intimate and sober as Jane Austen unfolds a simple love-story. She described her heroine in a letter a ...

The Help

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:21:52 PST

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To Kill a Mockingbird

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:10:49 PST

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'Shoot al the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this enchanting classic - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the De ...

The Audacity of Hope

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:09:57 PST

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Barack Obama's first book, Dreams from My Father, was a compelling and moving memoir focusing on personal issues of race, identity, and community. With his second book The Audacity of Hope, Obama engages themes raised in his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, shares personal views on faith and values and offers a vision of the future that involves repairing a "political pr ...

Made in America

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:29:38 PST

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Bill Bryson turns away from the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, ...

Dreams from My Father

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:20:25 PST

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In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small ...

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:58:00 PST

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A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years—from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to the post-Taliban rebuilding—that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where pers ...

A Walk in the Woods

Mon, 26 May 2008 15:57:51 PST

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Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silline ...

Catch-22

Wed, 21 May 2008 17:56:23 PST

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At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical indicement of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to survive it. It is a tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time in Italy plotting to survive.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Tue, 20 May 2008 14:02:14 PST

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Two magicians shall appear in England. The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me Centuries ago, when magic still existed in England, the greatest magician of them all was the Raven King. A human child brought up by fairies, the Raven King blended fairy wisdom and human reason to create English magic. Now, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he is barely more than a legen ...

Thousand Acres

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:58:13 PST

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"BRILLIANT . . . A THRILLING WORK OF ART." --Chicago Sun-Times When Larry Cook, the aging patriarch of a rich, thriving farm in Iowa, decides to retire, he offers his land to his three daughters. For Ginny and Rose, who live on the farm with their husbands, the gift makes sense--a reward for years of hard work, a challenge to make the farm even more successful. But the youngest, Caroline, a Des ...

Autobiography of Malcolm X

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:57:54 PST

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If there was any one man who articulated the anger, the struggle, and the beliefs of African Americans in the 1960s, that man was Malxolm X. His AUTOBIOGRAPHY is now an established classic of modern America, a book that expresses like none other the crucial truth about our times. "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." TEH NEW YORKTIMES

The Corrections

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:57:33 PST

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THE CORRECTIONS is a grandly entertaining novel for the new century-a comic, tragic masterpiece about a family breaking down in an age of easy fixes. After almost fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately, her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity to Parkinson's disease, and their children have long since flown the family nest to the catastrophes of t ...

Neither Here nor There

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:56:43 PST

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Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies -- in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, wit ...

Notes from a Small Island

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:56:26 PST

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Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate: "I had recently read that 3.7 million Americans according to a Gallup poll, believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me." That com ...

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:56:09 PST

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After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss ...

The Hours

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:54:36 PST

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The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel becomes a motion picture starring Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman, directed by Stephen Daldry from a screenplay by David Hare The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AID ...

The Da Vinci Code

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:53:03 PST

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Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to th ...

Digital Fortress

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:51:58 PST

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When the NSA's invincible code-breaking machine encounters a mysterious code it cannot break, the agency calls its head cryptographer, Susan Fletcher, a brilliant, beautiful mathematician. What she uncovers sends shock waves through the corridors of power. The NSA is being held hostage--not by guns or bombs -- but by a code so complex that if released would cripple U.S. intelligence. Caught in an ...

How to be Alone

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:51:23 PST

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From the National Book Award-winning author of "The Corrections," a collection of essays that reveal him to be one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics While the essays in this collection range in subject matter from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each one wrestles with the essential themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civil life a ...

State of Fear

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:50:53 PST

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In Tokyo, in Los Angeles, in Antarctica, in the Solomon Islands . . . an intelligence agent races to put all the pieces together to prevent a global catastrophe.

Prey

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:50:27 PST

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In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles--micro-robots--has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to de ...

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King v.3

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:49:12 PST

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In this title, the forces of Gondor and Rohan must make a last desperate stand against the monstrous armies of the Dark Lord, Sauron. And while good and evil engage in mighty battle, the fate of Middle-earth rests in the hands of two weary hobbits.

The Fellowship of the Ring

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:48:53 PST

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Frodo Baggins knew the Ringwraiths were searching for him--and the Ring of Power he bore that would enable Sauran to destroy all that was good in Middle-earth. Now it was up to Frodo and his faithful servant Sam to carry the Ring to where it could be detroyed--in the very center of Sauron's dark kingdom.

The Two Towers

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:48:35 PST

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THE GREATEST FANTASY EPIC OF OUR TIME The Fellowship was scattered. Some were bracing hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Some were contending with the treachery of the wizard Saruman. Only Frodo and Sam were left to take the accursed Ring of Power to be destroyed in Mordor–the dark Kingdom where Sauron was supreme. Their guide was Gollum, deceitful and lust-filled, slave to ...

Dreamcatcher

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:45:50 PST

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ONCE UPON A TIME, IN THE HAUNTED CITY OF DERRY, FOUR BOYS STOOD TOGETHER AND DID A BRAVE THING. IT WAS SOMETHING THAT CHANGED THEM IN WAYS THEY COULD NEVER BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND. Twenty-five years after saving a Down's-syndrome kid from bullies, Beav, Henry, Pete, and Jonesy -- now men with separate lives and separate problems -- reunite in the woods of Maine for their annual hunting trip. But wh ...

Down Under

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:42:22 PST

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After tales from the USA and Britain, Bill Bryson turns his roving eye to Australia, the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. It is the driest, flattest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. It has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way that anywhere else. Yet when Bill Bryson travelled to ...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:15 PST

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Harry’s sixth year at Hogwarts begins, and it feels like a reassuring place to return to after the strange events of the summer. Disappearances, murder and an ominous chilling mist which swirls through both the Muggle and wizarding worlds are harbingers of more sinister purpose. Voldemort’s army is swelling, and with it the Death Eaters are growing bolder and more deadly. Suspicions are rife, and ...

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:15 PST

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Harry Potter is a wizard. He is in his second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Little does he know that this year will be just as eventful as the last...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:15 PST

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Harry Potter is due to start his fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. His best friends Ron and Hermione have been very secretive all summer and he is desperate to get back to school and find out what has been going on. However, what Harry discovers is far more devastating than he could ever have expected… Suspense, secrets and thrilling action form the pen of J.K. Rowling en ...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:15 PST

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It is the summer holidays and soon Harry Potter will be starting his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry is counting the days: there are new spells to be learnt, more Quidditch to be played, and Hogwarts castle to continue exploring. But Harry needs to be careful – there are unexpected dangers lurking… J.K. Rowling continues to surprise and delight with the power of ...

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:15 PST

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Say you've spent the first 10 years of your life sleeping under the stairs of a family who loathes you. Then, in an absurd, magical twist of fate you find yourself surrounded by wizards, a caged snowy owl, a phoenix-feather wand, and jellybeans that come in every flavor, including strawberry, curry, grass, and sardine. Not only that, but you discover that you are a wizard yourself! This is exactl ...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:12:14 PST

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Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort's remaining Horcruxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or ...

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Tue, 13 May 2008 21:08:39 PST

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Harry Potter, along with his best friends, Ron and Hermione, is about to start his third year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry can’t wait to get back to school after the summer holidays. (Who wouldn’t if they lived with the horrible Dursleys?) But when Harry gets Hogwarts, the atmosphere is tense. There’s an escaped mass murderer on the loose, and the sinister prison guards of ...

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:56:16 PST

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Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction--is it worse than the disease? What's coming Next? Get a hint of what Michael Crichton sees on the ...

The Historian

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:37:17 PST

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In this riveting debut novel, a young girl discovers her father's darkest secret and embarks on a harrowing journey across Europe to complete the quest he never could--the quest to find history's most legendary fiend: Dracula. A brilliant literary novel as well as a breathtaking page-turner, THE HISTORIAN has already created an international frenzy. Set for publication in over 15 languages, th ...

The Kite Runner

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:36:43 PST

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A story of fathers and sons, friendship and betrayal, and the casualties of fate 1970s Afghanistan: Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to ...

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

Tue, 13 May 2008 20:32:32 PST

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From one of the most beloved and bestselling authors in the English language, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s Bill Bryson was born in the middle of the American century—1951—in the middle of the United States—Des Moines, Iowa—in the middle of the largest generation in American history—the baby boomers. As one of the best and funniest writers alive, h ...