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Modern Classics fiction favorites from 1970 to today
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The alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
A fable about undauntingly following one's dreams, listening to one's heart, and reading life's omens features dialogue between a boy and an unnamed being.
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Americanah
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Separated by differing ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland fifteen years later.
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Atonement
by Ian McEwan
In 1935 England, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses an event involving her sister Cecilia and her childhood friend Robbie Turner, and she becomes the victim of her own imagination, which leads her on a lifelong search for truth and absolution.
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Bel canto
by Ann Patchett
When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa--a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan.
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistently haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl.
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Bless me, Ultima
by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Chronicles the story of an alienated New Mexico boy who seeks an answer to his questions about life in his relationship with Ultima, a magical healer.
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The clan of the cave bear
by Jean M. Auel
After a natural disaster kills Ayla's tribe, members of the Clan of the Cave Bear find her and mistrust her because her blonde hair and blue eyes are different, but she eventually helps them survive.
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Cloud atlas
by David (David Stephen) Mitchell
Many characters live out their lives from 1850 to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii and eventually their disparate lives intertwine.
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Cold Mountain
by 1950- Frazier, Charles
After Inman escapes from a war hospital in 1864 and starts walking to Cold Mountain, Ada struggles to save her mountain farm with the help of Ruby, an illiterate but efficient farmer.
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The color purple
by 1944- Walker, Alice
Two African American sisters, one a missionary in Africa and the other a child-wife living in the South, support each other through their correspondence, beginning in the 1920s.
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A confederacy of dunces
by 1937-1969 Toole, John Kennedy
Ignatius J. Reilly of New Orleans, --selfish, domineering, deluded, tragic and larger than life-- is a noble crusader against a world of dunces. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. In magnificent revolt against the twentieth century, Ignatius propels his monstrous bulk among the flesh posts of the fallen city, documenting life on his Big Chief tablets as he goes, until his maroon-haired mother decrees that Ignatius must work.
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The corrections
by Jonathan Franzen
Enid Lambert begins to worry about her husband when he begins to withdraw and lose himself in negativity and depression as he faces Parkinson's disease.
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The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
by 1962- Haddon, Mark
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.
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Ender's game
by Orson Scott Card
Six-year-old Ender Wiggin and his fellow students at Battle School are being tested and trained to determine whether they possess the abilities to remake the world -- if the world survives an all-out war with an alien enemy.
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The English patient
by 1943- Ondaatje, Michael
Four damaged lives converge in a bomb-riddled Italian villa in the last days of the war. A grieving nurse, a maimed thief, an emotionally detached Indian sapper are each haunted in a different ways by the riddle of the man they know only as the English patient. A nameless burn victim who lies swathed in bandages in an upstairs room shares his memories of the bleak North African desert, explorers' caves and Bedouin tribesmen, forbidden love, and of annihilating anger. The consequences of the mysteries they reveal leave all the characters forever changed.
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The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
In 1969 Kerala, India, Rahel and her twin brother, Estha, struggle to forge a childhood for themselves amid the destruction of their family life, as they discover that the entire world can be transformed in a single moment.
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The handmaid's tale
by 1939- Atwood, Margaret
In a future world where the birth rate has declined, fertile women are rounded up, indoctrinated as "handmaids," and forced to bear children to prominent men.
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The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
by 1952-2001 Adams, Douglas
Chronicles the off-beat and occasionally extraterrestrial journeys, notions, and acquaintances of galactic traveler Arthur Dent.
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The house on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
For Esperanza, a young girl growing up in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, life is an endless landscape of concrete and run-down tenements, and she tries to rise above the hopelessness.
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Infinite jest
by David Foster Wallace
The story of an intelligent but zany dysfunctional family is set in a drug-and-alcohol addicts' halfway house and a tennis academy and follows such themes as heartbreak, philosophy, and advertising.
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The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
After being drawn together by the shadows of their past, four women start meeting every week in San Francisco to engage in hobbies they all enjoy. After one of the four members dies, her daughter takes her place to fulfill her mother's dying wish. After the revelation of a secret, the women are forced to think back to their pasts and remember the sometimes painful events of their lives.
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The kite runner
by Khaled Hosseini
Traces the unlikely friendship of a wealthy Afghan youth and a servant's son, in a tale that spans the final days of Afghanistan's monarchy through the atrocities of the present day.
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The lathe of heaven
by 1929- Le Guin, Ursula K.
George Orr discovers that his dreams possess the remarkable ability to change the world, and when he falls into the hands of a power-mad psychiatrist, he counters by dreaming up a perfect world that can overcome his nightmares, in a new edition of the classic science fiction novel.
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A lesson before dying
by 1933- Gaines, Ernest J.
A young illiterate African American man witnesses two black robbers kill a white store owner in Louisana in the late 1940s, and he is the one convicted.
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Life of Pi
by Yann Martel
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.
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Lonesome Dove
by Larry McMurtry
Former Texas Rangers leave their unsuccessful cattle business when they hear of good opportunities in newly opened territory.
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Memoirs of a geisha
by 1957- Golden, Arthur
A fictional memoir of a celebrated Japanese geisha describes how, as a little girl in 1929, she is sold into slavery; her efforts to learn the arts of the geisha; the impact of World War II; and her struggle to reinvent herself to win the man she loves.
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The memory keeper's daughter
by 1958- Edwards, Kim
In a tale spanning twenty-five years, a doctor delivers his newborn twins during a snowstorm and, rashly deciding to protect his wife from their baby daughter's affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child.
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One hundred years of solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
A celebration of the endless variety of life in the mythical village of Macondo chronicles the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of the small South American town.
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Never let me go
by 1954- Ishiguro, Kazuo
A reunion with two childhood friends--Ruth and Tommy--draws Kath and her companions on a nostalgic odyssey into the supposedly idyllic years of their lives at Hailsham, an isolated private school in the serene English countryside, and a dramatic confrontation with the truth about their childhoods and about their lives in the present.
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The pillars of the earth
by Ken Follett
Set in twelfth-century England, this epic of kings and peasants juxtaposes the building of a magnificent church with the violence and treachery that often characterized the Middle Ages.
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The Poisonwood Bible
by Barbara Kingsolver
The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary--Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters--begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives forever transformed over the course of three decades by the political and social upheaval of Africa.
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Ragtime
by 1931- Doctorow, E. L.
In America at the beginning of this century three families become entwined with Henry Ford, Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini, Theodore Dreiser, Sigmund, and Emiliano Zapata.
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The road
by 1933- McCarthy, Cormac
Apocalypse grips the earth; wildlife has disappeared; and starvation prevails. Amidst this bleak backdrop, a man and his young son slowly make their way toward the coast. Avoiding roves of marauding cannibals and fighting off starvation, they gain hope and stamina in knowing they are some of the remaining few virtuous people.
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The secret life of bees
by Sue Monk Kidd
After her "stand-in mother," a bold black woman named Rosaleen, insults the three biggest racists in town, Lily Owens joins Rosaleen on a journey to Tiburon, South Carolina, where they are taken in by three black, bee-keeping sisters.
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The shadow of the wind
by 1964- Ruiz Zafon, Carlos
A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.
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Snow falling on cedars
by David Guterson
Presents a tense courtroom drama, a poignant love story, and a haunting reflection on the delicate balance between the mind and heart.
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The Stepford wives
by Ira Levin
When Joanna Eberhart arrives in Stepford she struggles to establish a women's liberation group.
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The story of Edgar Sawtelle
by David Wroblewski
A tale reminiscent of "Hamlet" that also celebrates the alliance between humans and dogs follows speech-disabled Wisconsin youth Edgar, who bonds with three yearling canines and struggles to prove that his sinister uncle is responsible for his father's death.
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The time traveler's wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel.
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Watership Down
by 1920- Adams, Richard
In a constant struggle against oppression, a group of rabbits search for peaceful co-existence. Chronicles the adventures of a group of rabbits searching for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can live in peace.
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The wind-up bird chronicle
by 1949- Murakami, Haruki
While searching for his missing wife, Japanese lawyer Toru Okada has strange experiences and meets strange characters. A woman wants phone sex, a man describes wartime torture, he finds himself at the bottom of a well. Part detective story, part philosophical meditation.
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