#BroaderBookshelf 2024 - Books set on a college or university campus
Adele C.
Friday, January 05
Collection
Check out one of these titles and fulfill the #BroaderBookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge prompt, "Read a book that takes place on a college or university campus".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2024 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
"It's 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place-until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling. Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel's writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought. A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin's My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from"-- Provided by publisher.
College student Isaac struggles to manage his epilepsy and his day-to-day life. His medication does not seem to work, the doctors won't listen, the schoolwork keeps piling up, his family is in denial about his condition, and his social life falls apart as he feels isolated by his illness. Even with an unexpected new friend by his side, so much is up against him that Isaac is starting to think his epilepsy might be unbeatable.
"ALL'S WELL is about Miranda Fitch whose life is a waking nightmare after an accident ruins her acting career, and leaves her with chronic back pain, a failed marriage, and a deepening dependence on painkillers and alcohol. On the verge of losing her job as a college theater director, Miranda lives out her broken dreams through an upcoming production of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well, when the unimaginable happens. She suddenly recovers, but at what cost?"-- Provided by publisher.
"Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one. But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision. A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is the dazzlingly original second book from an author whose work has been described as "honest, searing and necessary" (Elle)" -- Provided by publisher.
"A portrait of the artist as a young woman. A novel about not just discovering but inventing oneself. The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings. At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan's friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin's summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer. With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself.The Idiot is a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman's fiction is unguarded against both life's affronts and its beauty--and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail"-- Provided by publisher.
"Bertha Mellish, "the most peculiar, quiet, reserved girl" at Mount Holyoke College, is missing. One cold November morning the junior is spotted walking through the Massachusetts woods; then, she vanishes. As a search team dredges the pond where she might have drowned, Bertha's panicked father and sister arrive at the campus desperate to find some clue as to her fate or state of mind. Bertha's best friend, Agnes, a scholarly loner studying medicine, might know the truth, but she is being unhelpfully tightlipped, inciting the suspicions of Bertha's family, her classmates, and the private investigator hired by the Mellish family doctor. As secrets from Agnes and Bertha's lives come to light, so do the competing agendas driving each person who is searching for Bertha. Where did Bertha go? Who would want to hurt her? And could she still be alive? Edmund White Award-winning author Katharine Beutner crafts a real-life unsolved mystery into an immersive, unforgettable work of literary crime fiction-a beautifully drawn historical portrait of queerness, family trauma, and the risks faced by women who dared to pursue unconventional paths at the end of the 19th century"-- Provided by publisher.
When college coed Megan Gunther is murdered after she receives threats on the Internet, NYPD detectives Ellie Hatcher and J. J. Rogan investigate the crime and its links to other murders and accelerate their efforts once Megan's roommate goes missing.
"From the best-selling author of The Emperor of Ocean Park and The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln-a new novel of terrific suspense and surprise: a brilliant amalgam of fact and fiction about a young black woman on whom the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis depends. October 1962. In Cuba: Soviet ships off-load what intelligence reveals to be nuclear missiles. In Washington, President Kennedy and his advisers are in furious debate over how long they can wait to discover what the Soviets intend before dropping the first bomb. And, in Ithaca, New York, Margo Jensen-a nineteen-year-old Cornell sophomore-is swept up in a "bizarre concatenation of circumstances" that will make of her the "back channel" liaison between Soviet Premier Khrushchev and Kennedy. Events unfold too quickly for her even to ask "why me?" But the stunning answer is revealed bit by bit as she races from Ithaca to Bulgaria to Washington, D.C., drawn ever more deeply into the crossfire-figurative and literal-of infighting between governmental agencies, both American and Soviet; into the confidence and-unsettlingly-the affection of the president of the United States; into desperate negotiations to avoid nuclear war; and, finally, into the secrets of the extraordinary legacy-of honor and bravery-she inherited from the father she never knew"-- Provided by publisher.
Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2,611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow-up to his successful, award-winning novel The Land Downstairs, that was published seven years earlier. On the eve of a college-sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest, two monumental things happen to Tripp: his wife walks out on him, and he learns that his mistress, who is also the chancellor of the college, Sara Gaskell, is pregnant with his child. To top it all off, Tripp finds himself involved in a bizarre crime involving one of his students, an alienated young writer named James Leer. During a party, Leer shoots and kills the chancellor's dog and steals her husband's prized Marilyn Monroe collectible: the jacket worn by the starlet on her wedding day to Joe DiMaggio. -- Wikipedia.
A newly-pregnant trained assassin wonders why her husband broke the rules and took a hit job at a college without telling her and also questions why a particular woman in the crowd responded differently than everyone else.
"A struggling PhD student makes a shocking discovery about a famous Chinese American poet that sets into motion a series of escalating events, both humorous and fraught, that culminates in an incendiary reckoning of her relationships, beliefs, and identity"-- Provided by publisher.
Sahara, a queer, half-Nigerian college sophomore who feels like an all-around failure, finds hope, answers, and unexpected redemption when she sets out to find the truth about The Unfortunates--the unlucky subset of black undergrads who have been mysteriously disappearing.
"A love story set in the foothills of Appalachia about two very different people--Owen, from Kentucky, and Alma, the daughter of Bosnian immigrants--navigating the entanglements of class and identify in an America coming apart at the seams"-- Provided by publisher.
Forging an unlikely bond after meeting during their first year at Columbia, a Hollywood child star, a disgruntled upper-middle-class daughter, and an inner-city escapee endure betrayal, illness, secrets, and the pressures of class and fame.
"Professor Pi Suleman is a black man from Memphis and proud of it. Still, he has to endure a lot as an adjunct professor at the city's prestigious University Along the Nile, a hard-earned career that is crushing his spirit. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague's prejudice and microaggressions. At the same time, he's being blackmailed by a powerful UAN professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her; he is unable to reveal that she is actually sexually violating him, trapped in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win"-- Provided by publisher.
Lauren, Sean, and Paul "waste time getting wasted and race from Thirsty Thurday Happy Hours to Dressed to Get Screwed parties to drinks at the End of the World."--Cover.
"Taryn Moore is young, beautiful, and brilliant, so why would she kill herself? When Detective Frankie Loomis arrives on the scene...ske knows in her gut there's more to the story...To English professor Jack Dorian, Taryn was the ultimate fantasy: intelligent, adoring, and completely off limits. But there was also a dark side to Taryn, a dangerous streak that threatened those she turned her affections to, including Jack. And now that she's dead, his problems are just beginning"-- Provided by publisher.
"A novel about faith, science, religion, and family that tells the deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief, narrated by a fifth year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford school of medicine studying the neural circuits of reward seeking behavior in mice"-- Provided by publisher.
"At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes disastrously off course, the fates of five people are upended."--from publisher's description.
From the Chronicles of Dean Harbinger Harrow, the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, Dean of Admissions and Confessions, Professor Emeritus, Department of Arts and Blackmail Letters, Senior Fellow, International Guild of Murderists
"Preparing you for an education you'll never forget, this introduction to The McMasters Conservatory, dedicated to the consummate execution of homicidal arts, follows students as they prepare for graduation by getting away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place to live"-- Provided by publisher
Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women's college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall Jarrel's classic novel was originally published to overwhelming critical acclaim in 1954, forging a new standard for campus satire--and instantly yielding comparisons to Dorothy Parker's razor-sharp barbs. Like his fictional nemesis, Jarrell cuts through the earnest conversations at Benton College--mischievously, but with mischief nowhere more wicked than when crusading against the vitriolic heroine herself.
"Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor. Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver's long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew, Adil Alam, arrives from France to stay with her. Getting to know them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds from which they come, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent-both in background and in Ruhaba's spirited engagement with the student movements on campus. After protests break out on campus demanding diversity across the university, Harding finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems attainable yet not, and as the women of his past taunt his memory, Harding reacts in ways shocking and devastating. An explosive, tense, and illuminating work of fiction, The Laughter is a fascinating portrait of privilege, radicalization, class, and modern academia that forces us to confront the assumptions we make, as both readers and as citizens"-- Provided by publisher.
A tumultuous and often hilarious first novel about one year of insanity at the Ivy-like Devon University, a blissful bubble of elite students and the adults at their mercy. Eph Russell is an English professor up for tenure. He may look and sound privileged, but Eph is right out of gun-rack, Bible-thumping rural Alabama. His beloved Devon, though, has become a place of warring tribes, and there are landmines waiting for Eph that he is unequipped to see.
"When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me." And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who's just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.-- Publisher's description
The first woman president of an elite progressive college responds to student protests about a popular professor's tenure denial before the group's controversial leader emerges and shocking acts of vandalism begin to destabilize the campus.
A Chinese boy orphaned by cholera and raised in Britain is trained to work at Oxford's prestigious Royal Institute of Translation, the world's center for translation and magic through silver-working, where he must choose between competing loyalties.
An English grad student struggling with her dissertation about the intellectual history of inspiration desperately searches for a perfect case study to anchor her thesis, only to find it in the unlikeliest of places.
"Venice Taylor believes that her relationship with sexy football star, Jarvis Anderson, is unbreakable; especially since they have been intense lovers for almost 4 years. During that time, they experienced some unique events that drew them closer together than most couples their age. Jarvis and Venice have no choice but to trust that the love they share will withstand any challenge."--Back cover.
"Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost. Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn't know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom that hungers for him. As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie's death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie's nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble. And there is something awful lurking, waiting for those walls to fall"-- Provided by publisher.
"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient comes a spellbinding tale of psychological suspense, weaving together Greek mythology, murder, and obsession, that further cements "Michaelides as a major player in the field" (Publishers Weekly). Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike-particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana's niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld? When another body is found, Mariana's obsession with proving Fosca's guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything-including her own life"-- Provided by publisher.
At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself--as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman's teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past.
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event. Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman."--Cover.
Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is a tireless lover who writes to his treacherous Liza: "A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do." Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.
"Bestselling author Lily Lee is on a short deadline to deliver her new career guide How to Land the Perfect Job, and she's been interviewing at all the top companies around town. But when she's offered a coveted position at her dream company, the employer's background check reveals she never actually finished her college degree. Unbelievably, her worst nightmare has come true. Lily returns to her alma mater to relive her senior year of college, after walking across the stage at graduation a decade earlier. Just as she starts getting used to the idea of being a student again, things get even more weird and chaotic when she discovers her computer science TA is her old college boyfriend, Jake Cho. As Lily and Jake reconnect, she sees that her late-blooming ex has done well for himself: the handsome, charming grad student appears to have his life together, while Lily's on the brink of losing her reputation and her book deal. Told in present day with glimpses of the past, The Do-Over is a delightfully warm and hopeful story about second chances in life and love, and how the future might not be a straight line, but we still end up exactly where we're supposed to be."-- Publisher marketing.
"Set in the post-martial-law era of 1990s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon. Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman who is alternately hot and cold toward her, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes the devil-may-care, rich-kid-turned-criminal Meng Sheng and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover Chu Kuang, as well as the bored, mischievous overachiever Tun Tun and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend Zhi Rou. Bursting with the optimism of newfound liberation and romantic idealism despite corroding innocence, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant and intimate masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature"-- Provided by publisher.
As one of seven young actors studying Shakespeare at an elite arts college, Oliver and his friends play the same roles onstage and off: hero, villain, tyrant, temptress. But when the casting changes, and the secondary characters usurp the stars, the plays spill dangerously over into life, and one of them is found dead. The rest face their greatest acting challenge yet: convincing the police, and themselves, that they are blameless.
"Set in the eighteenth century London underworld, this bawdy, genre-bending novel reimagines the life of thief and jailbreaker Jack Sheppard to tell a profound story about gender, love, and liberation. Recently jilted and increasingly unhinged, Dr. Voth throws himself into his work, obsessively researching the life of Jack Sheppard, a legendary eighteenth century thief. No one knows Jack's true story--his confessions have never been found. That is, until Dr. Voth discovers a mysterious stack of papers titled Confessions of the Fox. Dated 1724, the manuscript tells the story of an orphan named P. Sold into servitude at twelve, P struggles for years with her desire to live as "Jack." When P falls dizzyingly in love with Bess, a sex worker looking for freedom of her own, P begins to imagine a different life. Bess brings P into the London underworld where scamps and rogues clash with London's newly established police force, queer subcultures thrive, and ominous threats of an oncoming plague abound. At last, P becomes Jack Sheppard, one of the most notorious--and most wanted--thieves in history. An imaginative retelling of Brecht's Threepenny Opera, Confessions of the Fox blends high-spirited adventure, subversive history, and provocative wit to animate forgotten histories and the extraordinary characters hidden within. "Confessions of the Fox is a riotous and transporting novel. It's rich in the sound of another time, while thrillingly germane to our own. Jordy Rosenberg is a total original--part scamp, part genius--who has written a rollicking page-turner of a first novel. Hang on for the ride."--Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts "Hot damn! Jordy Rosenberg is one of the finest new talents I've seen in many years, and Confessions of the Fox is a startlingly good debut novel. The book is rich with fact and well-invented fiction, bubbling with ideas that surprise and satisfy."--Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling"-- Provided by publisher.
Coleman Silk is a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman, a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeply into Silk's life. Eventually, matters are made worse when Coleman's affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley is exposed. But amid the controversy, Silk must struggle to keep his greatest secret, a secret he's held for the majority of his life, from becoming made public.
In the course of one week, Henry Devereaux, Jr., a once-promising novelist and now the middle-aged chairman of a university English department in hilarious disarray, faces an angry colleague, a curvaceous adjunct trying to seduce him, and a goose on local television--all while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions.
"Virgil Flowers will have to watch his back--and his mouth--as he investigates a college culture war turned deadly in another one of Sandford's "madly entertaining Virgil Flowers mysteries" (New York Times Book Review)"-- Provided by publisher.
Harriet Vane's Oxford reunion is shadowed by a rash of bizarre pranks and malicious mischief that include beautifully worded death threats, burnt effigies and vicious poison-pen letters, and Harriet finds herself and Lord Peter Wimsey challenged by an elusive set of clues.
"Jason Fitger is a beleaguered professor of creative writing and literature at Payne University, a small and not very distinguished liberal arts college in the Midwest ... His once-promising writing career is in the doldrums, as is his romantic life, in part as the result of his unwise use of his private affairs for his novels ... In short, his life is a tale of woe, and the vehicle this ... novel uses to tell that tale is a series of ... letters of recommendation that Fitger is endlessly called upon by his students and colleagues to produce, each one of which is a small masterpiece of high dudgeon, low spirits, and passive-aggressive strategies"--Amazon.com.
“[A] jewel of a debut . . . abundantly satisfying.”?Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker ? A witty, intelligent novel of an American woman on the edge, by a brilliant new voice in fiction?“the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney” ( Publishers Weekly, starred review) As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels “like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had nowhere else to be but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise.” No one but her boyfriend knows that she?s just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists?Dorothy has two of them. Nor can she bring herself to tell the other women in her life: her friends, her doctor, her mentor, her mother. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure? Piercingly intelligent and darkly funny, The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet Dorothy?s mind is all she has to make sense of a world largely out of her control, one where disaster looms and is already here, where things happen but there is no plot. There is meaning, however, if Dorothy figures out where to look, and as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides, she finds it in the most unlikely places, from a Las Vegas poolside to a living room karaoke session. In literature?as Dorothy well knows?stories end. But life, as they say, goes on.
A satire on university life, describing the rackets and the intellectual dishonesty that goes on. The setting is the U of Moo where research into the destruction of rain forests is tailored to suit the corporation funding the project.
"Ian Smith, M.D. is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Blast the Sugar Out, SHRED, SUPER SHRED, The SHRED Power Cleanse and twelve other top-selling titles. A graduate of Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine, Smith is the author of one previous novel, The Blackbird Papers."-- Provided by publisher.
Richard Papen had never been to New England before his nineteenth year. Then he arrived at Hampden College and quickly became seduced by the sweet, dark rhythms of campus life -- in particular by an elite group of five students, Greek scholars, worldly, self-assured, and at first glance, highly unapproachable.
"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with a young straight man, conspire to fracture his defenses, while revealing hidden currents of resentment and desire that threaten the equilibrium of their community"-- Provided by publisher.
A dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students and the dark truths beneath their school's promises of prestige.
"A novel about a young Chinese woman whose graduate studies in chemistry go off track and lead her to discover the truths about her goals and desires"-- Provided by publisher.
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they cultivated a group of devoted and inseparable friends -- Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily -- during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Hannah is relieved to have finally put the past behind her, but her world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April's death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide ... including a murder.-- Publisher's description.
Set in 1920's England, the story examines the wealthy Flyte family through the eyes of Sebastian Flyte's less wealthy school friend Charles Ryder, who is eventually tempted into an extramarital affair with Sebastian's sister, Lady Julia. The novel is a story of faith and disillusionment in a glamorous upper-class world.
Shy, witty David Federman arrives at Harvard fully expecting to embrace, and be welcomed by, a new tribe of like-minded peers. But at first, beyond the friendly advances of a plain-looking Sara, his social status seems devastatingly unlikely to change. Then he meets Veronica Morgan Wells. Struck by both her beauty and her brains, David falls feverishly in love and is determined to stop at nothing to win her attention and a coveted invite into her glamorous Upper East Side world. David begins compromising his own moral standards for this one, great chance at happiness. But neither Veronica nor David, it turns out, are exactly as they seem....
"Korean-American adoptee Siobhan O'Brien has spent much of her life explaining her name and her family to strangers, but a more pressing problem is whether to carry on the PI agency that her dead boss unexpectedly left to her. Easing into middle age, Siobhan would generally rather have a glazed donut than a romance, but when an old friend asks Siobhan to find her daughter who has disappeared from her dorm, the rookie private detective's search begins at Llewellyn College. A women's institution of higher learning in upstate New York, Llewellyn, for the first time in its two-hundred-year history, has opened its doors to male students. Fringe group The Womyn of Llewellyn are furious, but their ex-fashion-model president declares they have little choice due to financial shortfalls. But if that's true, where did she get the money to build a brand new science center, and why is it under 24/7 surveillance by the town cops? As Siobhan delves deeper into the search for her friend's daughter, she encounters politely dangerous men in white turtlenecks, vegan cooking that might kill her, possibly deadly yoga poses, and a woman named Cleopatra who's got more issues than National Geographic."--Publisher.
"Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general--also known as her tough-as-talons mother--has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you're smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away...because dragons don't bond to "fragile" humans. They incinerate them. With fewer dragons willing to bondthan cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother's daughter--like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She'll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise"-- Provided by publisher.
"Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College--Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky. Now the real training begins, and Violet's already wondering how she'll get through. It's not just that it's grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it's designed to stretch the riders' capacity for pain beyond endurance. It's the new vice commandant, who's made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is--unless she betrays the man she loves. Although Violet's body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else's, she still has her wits--and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules. But a determination to survive won't be enough this year. Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College--and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end"-- Provided by publisher.
"One game. Six students. Five survivors. It was only ever meant to be a game played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University; a game of consequences, silly forfeits, and childish dares. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal and more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round. Who knows better than your best friends what would break you? A gripping psychological thriller partly inspired by the author's own time at Oxford University, this is perfect for fans of The Secret History and The Bellwether Revivals. The author's background in puzzle writing and setting can clearly be seen in the plotting of this clever, tricky book that will keep readers guessing to the very end"-- Provided by publisher.