Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975...
Khaled Hosseini's stunning debut novel The Kite Runner follows a young boy, Amir, as he faces the challenges that confront him on the path to manhood—testing friendships, finding love, cheating death, accepting faults, and gaining understanding. Living in Afghanistan in the 1960s, Amir enjoys a life of privilege that is shaped by his brotherly friendship with Hassan, his servant's son. Amir lives in constant want of his father's attention, feeling that he is a failure in his father's eyes. Hassan, on the other hand, seems to be able to do no wrong. Their friendship is a complex tapestry of love, loss, privilege, and shame. -- Publisher Excerpt
Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffennegger
Clare meets Henry for the first time when she is 6 and he is 36. Henry meets Clare for the first time when he is 28 and she is 20. They marry when Clare is 23 and Henry is 31. Although Clare has known Henry nearly all her life, Henry has only known Clare for three years. Sound confusing? Not in Niffenegger's capable hands. Henry DeTamble is the first person in history diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder. In short, he time travels, thus making it possible for an older version of Henry to visit his "real time" wife when she is still a child, while the 28-year-old version of himself has no idea who she is when he meets her for the first time in October 1991.
The Stand - Stephen King
This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the108-year-old Mother Abigail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.--Book excerpt
The Lovely Bones - Alice SeboldOn her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer.
Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad detective working her case. The Lovely Bones works as an odd yet affecting coming-of-age story. Susie struggles to accept her death while her family disintegrates in their grief: her father becomes determined to find her killer, her mother withdraws, her little brother Buckley attempts to make sense of his changed family, and her younger sister Lindsey moves through her teenage and young adult years with Susie riding spiritual shotgun. -- Publisher
