100 Great Reads - Adult

"Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty--an imaginative alchemy of The Golem and the Jinni, The Grace of Kings, and Uprooted, in which the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts. Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, she's a con woman of unsurpassed talent....

"This biography of the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court examines how she played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South"--

The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years

"Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne....

"Descent, the story of a family undone by the disappearance of a daughter who went out for a morning run and didn't come back, marks the adult fiction debut of a remarkable young writer. Stunning in its emotional impact, Descent is a compulsively readable page-turner with a strong literary sensibility. The girl's vanishing--on a sunny, late-summer vacation morning--all the more devastating for its mystery, is the beginning the family's harrowing journey...

"Gabriela is a senior negotiator in the Foreign Office. When she returns to her young family after a seven-month stint in Moscow, something doesn't seem right. Isobel is a journalist on the local paper in Camden. After witnessing a violent attack, she starts to investigate. But someone saw her watching, and is making themselves known in increasingly frightening ways. As Gabriela's life begins to unravel, Isobel gets closer to the truth, and the two...

In 1766, a ship docks at Bristol, England, disgorging a crate with two young elephants in poor health, but alive. A wealthy sugar merchant purchases them for his country estate and turns their care over to a young stable boy, Tom Page. It takes time for Tom and the two elephants to understand each other, but to the surprise of everyone on the estate, a remarkable bond is formed, and changes the lives of all who meet them.

"From the New York Times bestselling author of The Passage comes a riveting novel about a group of survivors on a hidden island utopia--where the truth isn't what it seems. Founded by the mysterious genius known as the Designer, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera's lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant...

Moving from London to Edinburgh after tragically losing her fiancé, former actress Alex Morris accepts a drama-therapy teaching job for troubled teens and bonds with them over Greek tragedies in ways that help her heal but inspire the teens in disturbing ways.