Books

East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

John Steinbeck · 1952

Василь Стус: Полімпести

Задивляюсь у твоï зiницi вибранi вiршi

Василь Симоненко · 2024

Слово про будинок Слово

Володимир Куліш · 2024

Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Read with Jenna Pick

Shelby Van Pelt · 2022

Burnt Sugar

Avni Doshi · 2020

Sunburn

Chloe Michellq Howarth · 2023

<p><b>** Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2024 **</b><br><b>** Shortlisted for the 2024 Book of the Year: Discover Award by the British Book Awards **<br>** Shortlisted for the 2023 Nero Book Award for Debut Fiction **<br>** Longlisted for the Diverse Book Awards 2024 **<br>** An <i>Evening Standard</i> 'One to Watch in 2023 **<br>** An <i>Independent</i> ‘Best Romantic Summer Reads' **<br>** A Book of the Month pick for <i>Diva</i>, <i>Irish Examiner</i>, <i>Novellic </i>& <i>Sainsbury’s Magazine</i> **<br>** A Most Anticipated pick for <i>PinkNews</i> & <i>Queer on the Street</i> **</b></p><br> <p>It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend.</p><br> <p>Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love.</p><br> <p>Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah.</p><br> <p>But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. Neither will be easy, but only one will offer her happiness.</p><br> <p><b><i>Sunburn</i> is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp. An atmospheric sapphic love story and coming-of-age novel with the intensity of Megan Nolan's <i>Acts of Desperation</i>, the long hot summer of André Aciman's <i>Call Me By Your Name</i> and the female friendships of Anna Hope's <i>Expectation</i>.</b></p><br> <p>‘A tender and heartfelt coming-of-age tale’ – <b><i>Heat</i></b></p><br> <p>‘A compassionate take on the push and pull between what's expected and what is felt’ – <b><i>Herald</i></b></p><br> <p>‘A deeply moving, heartfelt love story’ – <b><i>Daily Mail</i></b></p><br> <p>‘Lucy tells her story in a true, compelling voice, with an eye for minutiae, quaint apercus, and confidences that make her account moving and convincing’ – <b><i>SAGA Magazine</i></b></p><br> <p>‘Tender and poignant... Ideal reading for the last month of summer’ – <b><i>Diva</i></b></p><br> <p>'Intense and all-consuming - like the first love it describes - <i>Sunburn</i> transported me to the heart of summer and the heady days of late adolescence. I won't soon forget Chloe Michelle Howarth's addictive, lushly written debut' - <b>Laura Sims</b></p><br> <p>'Capturing all the intensity of first love, blended with the claustrophobia of small-town life, this debut, inspired by real experience, is tender and raw' - <b><i>The Bookseller</i></b></p><br> <p>'A beautiful coming of age love novel written with an insightful poetical prose, rich with religious allegory and texture which underscores the transformative, spiritual power of first love explored' - <b><i>Scene Magazine</i></b></p>

Desperate Characters

Paula Fox · 2015

A Ladder to the Sky: A Novel

John Boyne · 2018

American Gods: A Novel

Neil Gaiman · 2021

Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel

Taylor Jenkins Reid · 2020

<b>#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD! A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous breakup—from the author of <i>The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Malibu Rising, </i>and <i>Carrie Soto Is Back</i><br><br><b>REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NOW AN EMMY AWARD–NOMINATED ORIGINAL STREAMING SERIES EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY REESE WITHERSPOON</b><br>  <br>“An explosive, dynamite, down-and-dirty look at a fictional rock band told in an interview style that gives it irresistible surface energy.”—Elin Hilderbrand<br><br>ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, <i>The Washington Post, Esquire, Glamour, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire, Parade, Paste, Shelf Awareness, BookRiot<br></i></b><br> <i>Everyone knows DAISY JONES & THE SIX, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.<br><br></i>Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock ’n’ roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.<br><br> Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.<br><br> Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes that the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.<br><br> The making of that legend is chronicled in this riveting and unforgettable novel, written as an oral history of one of the biggest bands of the seventies. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a talented writer who takes her work to a new level with <i>Daisy Jones & The Six, </i>brilliantly capturing a place and time in an utterly distinctive voice.

Of Mice and Men

John Steinbeck · 2002

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai · 1973

<p> Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. </p><p>Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a "clown" to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness.</p><p>Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: "The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing." (The Japan Times)</p>

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V. E. Schwab · 2020

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER<br/>USA TODAY BESTSELLER<br/>NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER<br/>THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER<br/><br/>Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine<br/>#1 Library Reads Pick―October 2020<br/>#1 Indie Next Pick―October 2020<br/>BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) FINALIST―Book of The Month Club<br/><br/>A “Best Of” Book From: Oprah Mag * CNN * Amazon * Amazon Editors * NPR * Goodreads * Bustle * PopSugar * BuzzFeed * Barnes & Noble * Kirkus Reviews * Lambda Literary * Nerdette * The Nerd Daily * Polygon * Library Reads * io9 * Smart Bitches Trashy Books * LiteraryHub * Medium * BookBub * The Mary Sue * Chicago Tribune * NY Daily News * SyFy Wire * Powells.com * Bookish * Book Riot * Library Reads Voter Favorite *<br/><br/>In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force.<br/><br/>A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.<br/><br/>France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever―and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.<br/><br/>Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.<br/><br/>But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.<br/><br/>Also by V. E. Schwab<br/><br/>Shades of Magic<br/>A Darker Shade of Magic<br/>A Gathering of Shadows<br/>A Conjuring of Light<br/><br/>Villains<br/>Vicious<br/>Vengeful

Needful Things

Stephen King · 2016

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman · 2019

<p><b>SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.</b><br> <br> <b>Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.</b><br> <br> Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?<br> <br> Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.<br> <br> Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.<br> <br> <b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE <i>WATER CURE</i><br> <br> **<i>Orlanda</i>, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**</b></p>

The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)

Alexandre Dumas père · 2003

Play It As It Lays

Joan Didion · 1970

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde · 2021

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara · 2016

<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i> BESTSELLER • A stunning “portrait of the enduring grace of friendship” (<i>NPR</i>) about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves. A masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century.<br></b><br><b><b><b><b><b><b><b>NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST <b><b><b>•</b></b></b></b> MAN BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST <b>• <b><b><b><b><b> WINNER OF THE KIRKUS PRIZE</b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b></b><br><br><i>A Little Life</i> follows four college classmates—broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition—as they move to New York in search of fame and fortune. While their relationships, which are tinged by addiction, success, and pride, deepen over the decades, the men are held together by their devotion to the brilliant, enigmatic Jude, a man scarred by an unspeakable childhood trauma. A hymn to brotherly bonds and a masterful depiction of love in the twenty-first century, Hanya Yanagihara’s stunning novel is about the families we are born into, and those that we make for ourselves.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation: A Novel

Ottessa Moshfegh · 2019

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible A New York Times Bestseller • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly “Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

1984

George Orwell · 1961

<b>Written more than 70 years ago, <i>1984</i> was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, his dystopian vision of a government that will do anything to control the narrative is timelier than ever...<br><br><b>• Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s <i>The Great American Read •</i></b><br></b><br>“<i>The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.</i>”<br><br>Winston Smith toes the Party line, rewriting history to satisfy the demands of the Ministry of Truth. With each lie he writes, Winston grows to hate the Party that seeks power for its own sake and persecutes those who dare to commit thoughtcrimes. But as he starts to think for himself, Winston can’t escape the fact that Big Brother is always watching...<br><br>A startling and haunting novel, <i>1984</i> creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions—a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley · 2020

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Novel

Taylor Jenkins Reid · 2018

<b><i>NEW YORK TIMES</i></b><b> BESTSELLER</b><br> <br><b>“If you</b>’<b>re looking for a book to take on holiday this summer, <i>The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo</i> has got all the glitz and glamour to make it a perfect beach read.” —<i>Bustle</i></b><br> <br><b>From the <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Daisy Jones & the Six</i>—an entrancing and “wildly addictive journey of a reclusive Hollywood starlet” (<i>PopSugar</i>) as she reflects on her relentless rise to the top and the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.</b><br><br>Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?<br> <br>Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.<br> <br>Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.<br> <br>“Heartbreaking, yet beautiful” (Jamie Blynn, <i>Us Weekly</i>), <i>The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo </i>is “Tinseltown drama at its finest” (<i>Redbook</i>): a mesmerizing journey through the splendor of old Hollywood into the harsh realities of the present day as two women struggle with what it means—and what it costs—to face the truth.

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (Cover may vary)

Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett · 2006

The Hunger Games (Hunger Games Trilogy, Book 1)

Suzanne Collins · 2009

This Special Edition of <i>The Hunger Games</i> includes the most extensive interview Suzanne Collins has given since the publication of <i>The Hunger Games</i>; an absorbing behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the series; and an engaging archival conversation between Suzanne Collins and YA legend Walter Dean Myers on writing about war. The Special Edition answers many questions fans have had over the years, and gives great insight into the creation of this era-defining work.<p></p>In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before-and survival, for her, is second nature. Still, if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.