The Secret Life of Sparrow Delaney by Suzanne Harper

Sparrow Delaney is the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. By all accounts, she should be a very powerful psychic. Her mother, her grandmother, and her sisters Oriole, Dove, Wren, Raven, Lark, and Linnet can all communicate with the dead, and they are baffled by her apparent lack of psychic ability. In [...]

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The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch

This is the story of Cass and Max-Earnest, but those are not their real names. The story of what happened to them is a secret, but the author of The Name of this Book is Secret was never very good at keeping secrets. He advises you, therefore, to forget what you have read [...]

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Everlost by Neal Shusterman

Most everyone, at some point in his or her life, ponders the question of what happens after death. Everlost provides an interesting answer, in the form of a world that exists between life and death. As the story begins, Allie and Nick wake up dead. Nine months have passed since the car [...]

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Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi

Remember when science fiction used to be fun?
I’m starting to sound like my golden age fan friends. In all honesty, science fiction only recently made it into my reading priorities. But since I’ve passed from the occasional “sci-fi” dabbler into a full-blown SF reader, I can’t help but notice that the adventure, optimism, and fun [...]

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The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

A story about a time traveling librarian sounds like fun, right? Well, you’ll have to look elsewhere for a lighthearted science fiction adventure. This is angsty, heart-wrenching, emotional stuff, but it’s worth it. Henry DeTamble has “Chrono-Displacement”, which means that he can time travel, but here’s the catch – he has no control over when [...]

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The Fig Eater, by Jody Shields

In Jody Shields’ first novel, a young woman, Dora, is found murdered in a Viennese park near the end of the summer in 1910. Only a few clues are found near her body, and the Inspector makes meticulous note of these in his notebooks. He has just been taught the psychological study of crime under [...]

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On the Beach, by Nevil Shute

Written in 1957 by Nevil Shute, an aviation engineer who worked on the development of secret weapons for the British in WWII, On the Beach is the story of how a few of the last generation face their fate. A nuclear war, triggered by who knows what, has instantly killed everyone in the northern hemisphere. [...]

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Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go is a narrative by a former student at Hailsham, a peculiar boarding school in England. An adult now, Kathy H. describes scenes from her early childhood, adolescence, and the year immediately after graduation, when the students were moved to “the cottages” before they requested intensive training for their [...]

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The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood

The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, includes a novel-within-the-novel, “The Blind Assassin,” by Laura Chase. Laura’s novel is about two lovers who meet secretly. The male is a working-class writer and the female a privileged young woman who worries about getting caught much of the time. They meet at first so the writer can tell [...]

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A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

Here, read the first sentence and see if you’re hooked:
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; [...]

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