One Word Titles

Author	Stephenie Meyer
ISBN	0316015849

Actual rating: 1.5 stars. Believe it or not, there are actually a few books that are worse than Twilight.

Ok, funny story. I was sitting on my couch with my husband last night finishing up Twilight. I slammed the book shut and began rubbing my temples. Then, my husband goes, "So you finally...

Author	Johanna Spyri
ISBN	0753454947

Heidi, a Swiss book originally published in German in 1881, was one of those books I grew up with: my mother had a simplified, abridged version of it that I read many times and loved as a child. When I realized the GR group "Catching up on the Classics" was doing it as a group read, I jumped in, excited for the...

Author	Walter Scott
ISBN	0140436588

For this novel, Scott moved far away from the setting of his own turbulent time. He went back to the late 12th century, and to England rather than the Scottish settings of all his previous novels. He connected his writing Ivanhoe with his concerns about contemporary events.
Scott drew together the...

Author	Robert Louis Stevenson
ISBN	0439295785

Tricked by the uncle who has stolen his inheritance, young David Balfour is kidnapped and bound for America. Or at least that was the plan, until the ship runs into trouble and David is rescued by Alan Breck Stewart, fugitive Jacobite and, by his own admission, a ‘bonny fighter’. Balfour, a canny...

Author	Elizabeth Gaskell
ISBN	0141439882

'It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor...I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are!'

A portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters...

Author	Scott Westerfeld
ISBN	0689865392

Gorgeous. Popular. Perfect.

Perfectly wrong.

Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she's completely popular. It's everything she's ever wanted.

But beneath all the fun -- the nonstop...

Author	James Clavell
ISBN	0440178002

So sorry, I am not worthy of the honor of reviewing this novel. If however, my Lord insists it, then I shall endeavor to offer up some humble thoughts regarding its mighty, even epic narrative. Neh? The scope is so vast, the characters and settings are so many, the head is liable to spin at times, so sorry....

Author	A.S. Byatt
ISBN	0679735909

Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars researching the lives of two Victorian poets. As they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire—from...

Author	George Bernard Shaw
ISBN	0486282228

One of George Bernard Shaw's best-known plays, Pygmalion was a rousing success on the London and New York stages, an entertaining motion picture and a great hit with its musical version, My Fair Lady. An updated and considerably revised version of the ancient Greek legend of Pygmalion and Galatea,...

Author	Scott Westerfeld
ISBN	0689865406

"Special Circumstances": The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor -- frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting...

Author	George Eliot
ISBN	0451529170

Taking place in the years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Middlemarch explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature:...

Author	Rudyard Kipling
ISBN	0140183523

Kim is set in an imperialistic world; a world strikingly masculine, dominated by travel, trade and adventure, a world in which there is no question of the division between white and non-white.

Two men - a boy who grows into early manhood and an old ascetic priest, the lama - are at the center of...

Author	James Joyce
ISBN	0192839993

Life is full of missed opportunities and hard decisions. Sometimes it’s difficult to know what to actually do. Dubliners creates an image of an ever movie city, of an ever moving exchange of people who experience the reality of life. And that’s the whole point: realism. Not everything goes well,...

Author	Christopher Paolini
ISBN	0375826726

Oaths sworn... loyalties tested... forces collide.

It's been only months since Eragon first uttered "brisingr", an ancient language term for fire. Since then, he's not only learned to create magic with words — he's been challenged to his very core. Following the colossal battle against...

Author

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0679734511. (ISBN13: 9780679734512)

Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that...

Author	Christopher Paolini
ISBN	0375840400

Darkness falls…despair abounds…evil reigns…Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the...

Author	Scott Westerfeld
ISBN	1416951172

A few years after rebel Tally Youngblood takes down the Specials regime, a cultural renaissance sweeps the world. “Tech-heads” flaunt their latest gadgets, “kickers” spread gossip and trends, and “surge monkeys” are hooked on extreme plastic surgery. Popularity rules, and everyone...

Author	C.J. Sansom
ISBN	0330411969

”’This is not Thomas More’s Utopia, a nation of innocent savages waiting only for God’s word to complete their happiness. This is a violent realm, stewed in the corruption of a decadent church.’

‘I know.’

‘The papists will use every means to present us from building...

Author	Euripides
ISBN	0486275485

One of the most powerful and enduring of Greek tragedies, Medea centers on the myth of Jason, leader of the Argonauts, who has won the dragon-guarded treasure of the Golden Fleece with the help of the sorceress Medea. Having married Medea and fathered her two children, Jason abandons her for a more favorable...

Author	James Howe
ISBN	1416928170

(This review is from 2004.)

Since it’s Halloween, I thought I’d talk about something frightening: Bunnies. Vampire bunnies. Ninja vampire bunnies. Okay, so, maybe not that ninja part. But definitely vampire bunnies—one in particular.

So, my roommate (Mr. “I’m not...

Author	Robert Harris
ISBN	0061006629

It is twenty years after Nazi Germany's triumphant victory in World War II and the entire country is preparing for the grand celebration of the Führer's seventy-fifth birthday, as well as the imminent peacemaking visit from President Kennedy.

Meanwhile, Berlin Detective Xavier March...

Author	Christopher Paolini
ISBN	0375826696

One boy...
One dragon...
A world of adventure.

When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon soon realizes he has stumbled...

Author	Franz Kafka
ISBN	0805210644

Kafka's first and funniest novel, Amerika tells the story of the young immigrant Karl Rossmann who, after an embarrassing sexual misadventure, finds himself "packed off to America" by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind...

Author

Ovid

Prized through the ages for its splendor and its savage, sophisticated wit, The Metamorphoses is a masterpiece of Western culture--the first attempt to link all the Greek myths, before and after Homer, in a cohesive whole, to the Roman myths of Ovid's day. Horace Gregory, in this modern translation,...

Author	Knut Hamsun
ISBN	0486431681

One of the most important and controversial writers of the 20th century, Knut Hamsun made literary history with the publication in 1890 of this powerful, autobiographical novel recounting the abject poverty, hunger and despair of a young writer struggling to achieve self-discovery and its ultimate...

Author	Leon Uris
ISBN	0553258478

Exodus is an international publishing phenomenon--the towering novel of the twentieth century's most dramatic geopolitical event. Leon Uris magnificently portrays the birth of a new nation in the midst of enemies--the beginning of an earthshaking struggle for power. Here is the tale that swept...

Author	Susan Cooper
ISBN	0689840349

Simon, Jane, and Barney, enlisted by their mysterious great-uncle, arrive in a small coastal town to recover a priceless golden grail stolen by the forces of evil -- Dark. They are not at first aware of the strange powers of another boy brought to help, Will Stanton -- nor of the sinister significance...

Author	Amanda Quick
ISBN	0553289322

With her reputation forever tarnished by a youthful indiscretion, lovely Emily Faringdon is resigned to a life of spinsterhood, until she embarks on an unusual correspondence and finds herself falling head over heels in love. Sensitive, intelligent, and high-minded, her noble pen pal seems to embody...

Author	Gail Carson Levine
ISBN	0060734086

In the kingdom of Ayortha, who is the fairest of them all? Certainly not Aza. She is thoroughly convinced that she is ugly. What she may lack in looks, though, she makes up for with a kind heart, and with something no one else has-a magical voice. Her vocal talents captivate all who hear them, and in Ontio...

Author	Ayaan Hirsi Ali
ISBN	0743289684

One of today’s most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamist who threatened that she would be next. She made headlines again when she was stripped of her citizenship and resigned from the...

Author	Agatha Christie
ISBN	0451200187

In utter disbelief, Jane Marple read the letter addressed to her from the recently deceased Mr Rafiel - an acquaintance she had met briefly on her travels. He had left instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death. The only problem was, he had failed to tell her who was involved or where and...

Author	C.J. Sansom
ISBN	0230711251

C.J. Sansom dazzles with his great set of Tudor era historical mysteries, mixing a few legal conundrums with controversies of the time to keep the reader hooked. England is at war, though its citizenry is less than enamoured with the idea. France remains a thorn in the side of King Henry VIII and he has...

Author

Dick Francis

What is there to say about Dick Francis? As I think about all of his books (yes, this review covers all of his books, and yes I've read them all) I think about a moral ethical hero, steeped in intelligence and goodness embroiled in evil machinations within British horse racing society - either directly...

Author

Tamora Pierce

As the only female page in history to last beyond the first year of formal training to become a knight, 11-year-old Keladry of Mindelan has an uphill battle to fight. In addition to proving herself worthy of being a page, Kel spends her time defending first-year pages from bullies, staying on top of homework,...

Author	E.M. Forster
ISBN	0393310329

Maurice is heartbroken over unrequited love, which opened his heart and mind to his own sexual identity. In order to be true to himself, he goes against the grain of society’s often unspoken rules of class, wealth, and politics.
Forster understood that his homage to same-sex love, if published...

Author	Evelyn Waugh
ISBN	0141187492

Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the "Daily Beast", has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner-party tip from Mrs Algernon Smith,...