Reading List for 2007
Explore the ultimate 2007 reading list featuring top books of the year. Discover must-read novels, bestsellers, and hidden gems to dive into from 2007's literary highlights.
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A Spot of Bother
by Mark Haddon
George Hall is an unobtrusive man. A little distant, perhaps, a little cautious, not at quite at ease with the emotional demands of fatherhood, or manly bonhomie. He does not understand the modern obsession with talking about everything. "The secret of contentment, George felt, lay in ignoring many things completely." Some things in life, however, cannot be ignored. At 61, George is settling down to a comfortable retirement, building a shed in his garden, reading historical novels and listening to a bit of light jazz. Then his tempestuous daughter, Katie, announces that she is getting re-married, to the deeply inappropriate Ray. Her family is not pleased - as her brother Jamie observes, Ray has "strangler's hands." Katie can't decide if she loves Ray, or loves the wonderful way he has with her son Jacob, and her mother Jean is a bit put out by all the planning and arguing the wedding has occasioned, which get in the way of her quite fulfilling late-life affair with one of her husband's ex-colleagues. And the tidy and pleasant life Jamie has created crumbles when he fails to invite his lover, Tony, to the dreaded nuptials. Unnoticed in the uproar, George discovers a sinister lesion on his hip, and quietly begins to lose his mind. The way these damaged people fall apart - and come together - as a family is the true subject of Haddon's disturbing yet amusing portrait of a dignified man trying to go insane politely. A SPOT OF BOTHER is Mark Haddon's unforgettable follow-up to the internationally beloved bestseller THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME. Here the madness - literally - of family life proves rich comic fodder for Haddon's crackling prose and bittersweet insights into misdirected love.
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Rise and Shine
by Anna Quindlen
Life will never be the same for Meghan, the star of Rise and shine, after she mutters words of profanity into the open mike, as they cut for a commercial break.
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Hannibal Rising
by Thomas Harris
This novel explains the early years of Hannibal Lecter, and how they affected his later behaviour.
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The Teahouse Fire
by Ellis Avery
This sweeping debut novel drawn from a history shrouded in secrets follows two women--one American, one Japanese--whose fates become entwined in the rapidly changing world of late-19th-century Japan.
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For One More Day
by Mitch Albom
This is the story of Charley, a child of divorce who is always forced to choose between his mother and his father. He grows into a man and starts a family of his own. But one fateful weekend, he leaves his mother to secretly be with his father - and she dies while he is gone. This haunts him for years. It unravels his own young family. It leads him to depression and drunkenness. One night, he decides to take his life. But somewhere between this world and the next, he encounters his mother again, in their hometown, and gets to spend one last day with her - the day he missed and always wished he'd had. He asks the questions many of us yearn to ask, the questions we never ask while our parents are alive. By the end of this magical day, Charley discovers how little he really knew about his mother, the secret of how her love saved their family, and how deeply he wants the second chance to save his own.
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A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, the #1 New York Times bestseller A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love. âJust as good, if not better, than Khaled Hosseiniâs best-selling first book, The Kite Runner.ââNewsweek Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival. A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.
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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling
At a time when the forces of evil seem to be gaining the upper hand, Harry comes of age in the wizarding world, and must take on and defeat Voldemort--or be killed himself.
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Seeker
by Jack McDevitt
After the disappearance of an entire colony, antiquities dealer Alex Benedict finds a cup that appears to be from one of the colony's ships, and, in attempting to establish its provenance, follows a trail that leads to the ship.
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Blaze
by Richard Bachman
Originally written thirty-five years ago but never published, a crime novel chronicles the life and times of Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.--the crimes committed against him and the crimes he himself commits, including a kidnapping he is doomed to attempt.
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The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
Now a major motion picture from Lionsgate starring Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson, and Naomi Watts. MORE THAN SEVEN YEARS ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST The perennially bestselling, extraordinary, one-of-a-kind, ânothing short of spectacularâ (Entertainment Weekly) memoir from one of the worldâs most gifted storytellers. The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannetteâs brilliant and charismatic father captured his childrenâs imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didnât want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishingâa memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
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Infinity Beach
by Jack McDevitt
We are alone. That is the verdict, after centuries of Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence missions and space exploration. The only living things in the Universe are found on the Nine Worlds settled from Earth, and the starships that knit them together. Or so it's believed, until Dr. Kimberly Brandywine sets out to find what happened to her clone-sister Emily, who, after the final, unsuccessful manned SETI expedition, disappeared along with the rest of her ship's crew. Following a few ominous clues, Kim discovers the ship's log was faked. Something happened out there in the darkness between the stars, and she's prepared to go to any length to find answers. Even if it means giving up her career...stealing a starship...losing her lover. Kim is about to discover the truth about her sister -- and about more than she ever dared imagine.
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The Engines of God
by Jack McDevitt
An unknown race called the Monument-Makers creates a stunning array of gorgeous statues, scattering them throughout the galaxy and encoding them with strange inscriptions that hold the key to the survival of humankind. Reprint. AB. K.
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The Good Guy
by Dean Ray Koontz
Timothy Carrier has a dry sense of humor, but his deadpan wit lands him in a precarious situation when a stranger Tim converses with mistakes him for a hit man.
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Deepsix
by Jack McDevitt
In the year 2204, tragedy and terror forced a scientific team to prematurely evacuate Maleiva III. Nineteen years later, a rogue moon hurtling through space is about to obliterate the last opportunity to study this rare, life-supporting planet. With less than three weeks left before the disaster, superluminal pilot Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins -- the only even remotely qualified professional within lightyears of the ill-fated planet -- must lead a small scientific team to the surface to glean whatever they can about its lifeforms and lost civilizations before time runs out. But catastrophe awaits when they are stranded on this strange and complex world of puzzles and impossibilities. And now Hutch and her people must somehow survive on a hostile world going rapidly mad -- as the clock ticks toward apocalypse for a doomed enigma now called...
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Bones to Ashes
by Kathy Reichs
Discovering the skeleton of a young girl in the neighborhood of a childhood best friend who had gone missing thirty years earlier, Tempe Brennan investigates suspicions that victim and her friend are one and the same
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On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan
The story centers around two newlyweds, Edward and Florence Mayhew both virgins who must struggle through their internal battle with sexual anxiety.
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Farnham's Freehold
by Robert A. Heinlein
A nuclear blast sends Hugh Farnham and his family flying two thousand years into the future where humans are forced into slavery as punishment for having nearly destroyed the world.
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The Hundred Secret Senses
by Amy Tan
Chinese-American Olivia Laguni has a battle of wills with her half-sister and lifelong nemesis, Kwan Li, whose haunting predictions and implementation of the secret senses link their family's struggles to the challenges of their ancestors. Reprint.
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Book of the Dead
by Patricia Daniels Cornwell
Relocating to Charleston after a particularly grueling case, Dr. Kay Scarpetta opens a private forensic pathology practice but is quickly targeted by local politics and a covert saboteur before a series of violent deaths bring her skills into high view. 1,500,000 first printing. BOMC, Lit Guild, Doubleday, & Mystery Guild Main.
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Playing For Pizza
by John Grisham
Rick Dockery was the third-string quarterback for the Cleveland Browns. In the AFC Championship game against Denver, to the surprise and dismay of virtually everyone, Rick actually got into the game. With a 17-point lead and just minutes to go, Rick provided what was arguably the worst single performance in the history of the NFL. Overnight, he became a national laughingstock and, of course, was immediately cut by the Browns and shunned by all other teams. But all Rick knows is football, and he insists that his agent, Arnie, find a team that needs him. Against enormous odds Arnie finally locates just such a team and informs Rick that, miraculously, he can in fact now be astartingquarterback. Great, says Rick--for which team? The mighty Panthers of Parma, Italy. Yes, Italians do play American football, to one degree or another, and the Parma Panthers desperately want a former NFL player--any former NFL player--at their helm. So Rick reluctantly agrees to play for the Panthers--at least until a better offer comes along--and heads off to Italy. He knows nothing about Parma--not even where it is--has never been to Europe, and doesn't speak or understand a word of Italian. To say that Italy--the land of opera, fine wines, extremely small cars, romance, andFootball Americano-- holds a few surprises for Rick Dockery would be something of an understatement.
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The Ghost Brigades
by John Scalzi
The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. Theyâre young, theyâre fast and strong, and theyâre totally without normal human qualms. The universe is a dangerous place for humanityâand it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDFâs biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did. Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers -- a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jaredâs brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades. At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutinâs memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reasonâs for Boutinâs betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanityâs mere military defeat... "A mix of Starship Troopers and Universal Soldier, Ghost Brigades evokes awakening, betrayal, and combat in the best military sci-fi tradition."âEntertainment Weekly "An impressive piece of work."âPhiladelphia Inquirer "Fast and deep . . . I like the galaxy this author's playing in, the characters he limns, the situations he's playing with, and I'm glad there's at least one more volume on the way."âSan Diego Union-Tribune "In Heinleinesque fashion, the book is loaded with scenes of comradeship, isolation, ruthlessness and the protocols, which govern the lives of active-duty soldiers. But this is where Scalzi, famous for his blog âThe Whatever,â surpasses Heinlein. Scalzi weaves in subtle discussions of humanity's growing fear of aging and our simultaneous attraction and repulsion to the Frankenstein-like creatures we are able to create."âSan Antonio Express-News "Scalzi is a natural heir to Heinlein, and his second book in this series is a good old-fashioned space opera, which takes time to question the nature of free will."âSt. Louis Press-Dispatch "The alliance of three alien races against interstellar humanity, the defection of a human military scientist, and the signs of an impending war call for desperate measures from the Colonial Defense Forces. The creation of the superhuman hybrid Jared Dirac from the DNA of the traitor Charles Boutin is intended to provide a window on Boutin's mind and on the reasons for the alien alliance, but the transfer apparently fails, and Dirac is assigned to the Ghost Brigades, Special Forces troops cloned from the DNA of dead men minus any moral qualms. The sequel to Old Man's War combines taut military action with keen insights into the moral issues revolving around developing technologies. Scalzi has a finely tuned sense of balance between personal drama and the âbig pictureâ in this SCI FI Essential Book choice. Highly recommended."âLibrary Journal (starred review) "Scalzi's riveting and original Old Man's War introduced readers to the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF), an Earth-based galactic army composed of senior citizens rejuvenated by high-tech wizardry into youthful warriors. In this equally engaging, battle-driven sequel, the CDF's latest operation entails tracking down renegade scientist Charles Boutin, who is responsible for handing over deadly military secrets to humanity's extraterrestrial enemies. Fortunately, a computer-based replica of Boutin's consciousness is on file and ready for transfer into newly cloned special-forces soldier Jirad Dirac, who shares Boutin's DNA. When the consciousness transfer doesn't quite take, Dirac is handed off to a battalion for routine but closely monitored training. Just when Dirac is getting comfortable with his own identity, however, Boutin's memories kick in, and Dirac and his team are summarily dispatched to an enemy planet to capture Boutin and solve the mystery of his treason before humanity is destroyed. Scalzi skillfully weaves together action, memorable characterizations, and a touch of philosophy in a first-rate military sf outing."âCarl Hays, Booklist "[A] fast-paced interstellar military drama . . . It follows Jared Dirac, a superhuman soldier, from unusual birth to ambiguous death. Dirac is an altered clone of Charles Boutin, a military scientist who betrayed humankind to alien aggressors, and the Colonial Defense Forces' only hope of finding Boutin lies in transplanting his memories into Dirac's brain. When the transplant seems to fail, Dirac is sent to Special Forces, known as the Ghost Brigades for their habit of creating new soldiers from the DNA of the dead. His indoctrination there comes in handy when Boutin's memories begin to surface. Scalzi pays gleeful homage to Ender's Game, The Forever War and Starship Troopers."âPublishers Weekly
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Old Man's War
by John Scalzi
John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wifeâs grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarceâand alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanityâs resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They donât want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. Youâll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. Youâll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, youâll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagineâand what he will become is far stranger. "Solid . . . [Scalzi] sidesteps most of the clichĂ©s of military science fiction, delivers fast-paced scenes of combat and pays attention to the science underpinning his premise." âSan Francisco Chronicle "Scalzi's imagined interstellar arena is coherently and compellingly delineated . . . His speculative elements are top-notch. His combat scenes are blood-roiling. His dialogue is suitably snappy and profane. And the moral and philosophical issues he raises . . . insert useful ethical burrs under the military saddle of the story." âPaul Di Filippo, The Washington Post "Thought-provoking!" âEntertainment Weekly "Smartly conceived and thoroughly entertaining, Old Manâs War is a splendid novel." âCleveland Plain Dealer "When humanity reaches the stars, it discovers that it must defend its claim to new planets against alien races with similar expansionist tendencies. To ensure the expertise of its soldiers, Earth creates the Colonial Defense Force, an army of men and women otherwise classified as senior citizens, who give up their lives on Earth for an uncertain and perilous future among the stars. Scalzi's first novel presents a new approach to military sf, boasting an unusual cast of senior citizens as heroes. A good choice for most libraries." âLibrary Journal "Though a lot of SF writers are more or less efficiently continuing the tradition of Robert A. Heinlein, Scalziâs astonishingly proficient first novel reads like an original work by the late grand master . . . This virtuoso debut pays tribute to SFâs past while showing that well-worn tropes still can have real zip when theyâre approached with ingenuity." âPublishers Weekly (starred review) "Gripping and surpassingly original. It's Starship Troopers without the lectures. It's The Forever War with better sex. It's funny, it's sad, and it's true." âCory Doctorow "John Scalzi is a fresh and appealing new voice, and Old Man's War is classic SF seen from a modern perspectiveâa fast-paced tour of a daunting, hostile universe." âRobert Charles Wilson "I enjoyed Old Man's War immensely. A space war story with fast action, vivid characters, moral complexity and cool speculative physics, set in a future you almost want to live into, and a universe you sincerely hope you don't live in already." âKen MacLeod