Literature

Powells.com Staff Pick
Innovative and educational, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a captivating novel about a family marked by fuku (curse) and circumstance. Díaz's story is reminiscent of Steinbeck's East of Eden — except that it's set in modern-day... (read more)

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Crackling with intelligence and humor, The Position is the masterful story of one extraordinary family at the hilarious height of the sexual revolution -- and through the thirty-year hangover that followed. In 1975, Paul and Roz Mellow write a... (read more)

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Strike-me-dead beautiful and bleak — this is the book I put into every customer's hands. Absolutely the best thing out of 2006, and perhaps many years preceding, The Road reminds me of McCarthy's early novels, only matured to perfection. Recommended... (read more)

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Bringing together Jane Austen's most beloved characters and storylines-a clever, playful, interactive, and highly entertaining approach to the wildly popular novels in which you, the reader, decide the outcome. Name: Elizabeth Bennet. Mission: To marry... (read more)

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Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is... (read more)

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"The Family Tree combines all that you could wish of a novel — humor, pathos, sex, and tragedy. In a wry voice, reminiscent of Kate Atkinson's, Cadwalladr unravels a complicated and unerringly compelling story of three generations of women. Not to... (read more)

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I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current. So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright... (read more)

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What to read next is every book lover's greatest dilemma. Nancy Pearl comes to the rescue with this wide-ranging and fun guide to the best reading new and old. Pearl, who inspired legions of litterateurs with "What If All (name the city) Read the Same... (read more)

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With the same wicked humor and delicious charm that have won her millions of devoted fans, Sophie Kinsella, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Shopaholic & Baby, returns with an irresistible new novel and a fresh new heroine who finds herself... (read more)

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You don't have to have action figures on your desk to appreciate Austin Grossman's novel Soon I Will Be Invincible. Sure, superheroes and supervillains clash on a galactic scale, but it's not all about fighting for Truth and Justice. The reader gets an... (read more)

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One of Vonnegut's major works, this is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.... (read more)