reading list
Items in this hypelist
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Ripe
Sarah Rose Etter • 2023
Childhood, Youth, Dependency The Copenhagen Trilogy
Tove Ditlevsen • 2021
Franny and Zooey
J. D. Salinger • 1991
East of Eden (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)
John Steinbeck • 1952
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>
Bunny
Mona Awad • 2019
Strange Pictures
Uketsu • 2025
Betty
Tiffany McDaniel • 2021
Hangsaman
Shirley Jackson • 2013
Of Strangers and Bees
Hamid Ismailov • 2019
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • 2012
The Idiot (Vintage Classics)
Fyodor Dostoevsky • 2012
Kokoro
Natsume Soseki • 2022
CIRCE
Madeline Miller • 2020
"A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller is "both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times). In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child -- not powerful like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power -- the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts, and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and page-turning suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world. #1 New York Times bestseller -- named one of the best books of the year by NPR, the Washington Post, People, Time, Amazon, Entertainment Weekly, Bustle, Newsweek, the A.V. Club, Christian Science Monitor, Refinery 29, BuzzFeed, Paste, Audible, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Thrillist, NYPL, Self, Real Simple, Goodreads, Boston Globe, Electric Literature, BookPage, the Guardian, Book Riot, Seattle Times, and Business Insider
Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro • 2006
<b>NOBEL PRIZE WINNER <b>•</b> From the acclaimed, bestselling author of <i>The Remains of the Day</i> comes “a Gothic tour de force" (<i>The New York Times</i>) with an extraordinary twist—a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic.<br><br>One of <i>The New York Times</i>’s 10 Best Books of the 21st Century • A <i>Kirkus Reviews </i>Best Fiction Book of the Century • A <i>Los Angeles Times</i> Best Fiction Book of the Last 30 Years</b><br><br>As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. <br><br>Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.
Our Bodies, Their Battlefield What War Does to Women
Christina Lamb • 2020
Good Material
Dolly Alderton • 2023
The Song of Achilles A Novel
Madeline Miller • 2012
The Glass Castle A Memoir
Jeannette Walls • 2006
The Word for World is Forest
Ursula K. Le Guin • 2010
<p>The award-winning masterpiece by one of today's most honored writers, Ursula K. Le Guin!<br><br><i>The Word for World is Forest </i><br><br>When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters. <br><br>Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.</p>
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith • 2009
Almond A Novel
Won-Pyung Sohn • 2021
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.
Loved One
Aisha Muharrar • 2025
