Scott relocated far from the backdrop of his own difficult time for this book. Instead of using the Scottish settings from all of his other books, he turned back the clock to the late 12th century and to England. He made a connection between his concerns about current affairs and Ivanhoe. The themes of historical actuality and chivalric love, social realism, grand adventure, and the past and present were brought together by Scott.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.”
“We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon”
“I have heard men talk about the blessings of freedom,” he said to himself, “but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.”
“Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion.”
“I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth but never in thy heart nor in thy practice”
In 1941, Lina, a fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl, is like any other teenager. She paints, doodles, and develops crushes on men. Up until the night when Soviet officers storm into her house and uproot her family from their cozy existence. Lina, her mother, and her baby brother slowly travel north, passing the Arctic Circle on their way to a work camp in the harshest parts of Siberia after being separated from their father and crammed aboard a cramped, filthy train car. Under Stalin’s orders, they are compelled to work in the harshest conditions to dig for beets and battle for their lives.
In an effort to let her father know they are still alive, Lina methodically and dangerously sketches out events in the hopes that these signals may reach the prison camp where he is being held. Through extraordinary bravery, love, and hope, Lina survives the protracted and terrifying voyage that lasts years and covers 6,500 miles. The book Between Shades of Gray will take your breath away and win your heart.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Have you ever wondered what human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
“Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
“We’d been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
“Krasivaya. It means beautiful, but with strength. Unique.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
“Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived?”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray
Winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year award and finalist for the Booker Prize. Four travelers enter the Judean desert in order to fast and pray for their lost souls two thousand years ago. They come across the evil trader Musa, a maniac, a sadist, a rapist, and even a Satan, who enslaves them under his dictatorial rule in the sweltering heat and barren rocks. A Galilean who has been fasting for forty days is also present; he is a faint figure in the distance, and legend has it that he is capable of doing miracles. They start their harrowing struggle for survival here, stranded in the forest.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It was their creed that devils had no place on earth, that evil was not a living creature in the world. There was no one to blame other than oneself.”
― Jim Crace, Quarantine: Picador Classic
“We only meet the God within our true selves through suffering. We seek the wilderness because in this solitude we can hear ourselves more clearly.”
― Jim Crace, Quarantine
Nobody anticipates a princess to be ruthless. Lada Dragwlya prefers it that way, too. Lada has always known that being merciless is essential for life since she and her sweet younger brother, Radu, were uprooted from their Wallachian birthplace and left by their father to be trained in the Ottoman courts. She and Radu are destined to play the role of pawns in a cruel game, with an invisible sword watching their every move. Because of their ancestry, which makes them unique and targets,
Lada despises the Ottomans and waits for the day she can travel back to Wallachia and reclaim her heritage before organizing her retribution. Only a place where he feels comfortable is what Radu yearns for. Radu feels as though he has discovered a true friend when they meet Mehmed, the rebellious and lonely son of the sultan, and Lada wonders if she has finally found someone deserving of her affection.
Mehmed, however, is the heir to the very empire that Radu now considers his home and against which Lada has sworn to fight. Lada, Radu, and Mehmed form a toxic triangle that puts undue pressure on the ties of love and loyalty.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“On our wedding night,” she said, “I will cut out your tongue and swallow it. Then both tongues that spoke our marriage vows will belong to me, and I will be wed only to myself. You will most likely choke to death on your own blood, which will be unfortunate, but I will be both husband and wife and therefore not a widow to be pitied.”
“Her spine was steel. Her heart was armor. Her eyes were fire.”
“So the question becomes, Daughter of the Dragon, what will you sacrifice? What will you let be taken away so that you, too, can have power?”
“Some victories are merely defeat wearing the wrong clothing”
“Souls and thrones are irreconcilable.”
Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig in the Pyrenees near Carcassonne, enters a cave by accident and finds a surprising discovery inside: two rotting skeletons, weird writing on the walls, and the layout of a labyrinth. A young woman named Alais receives a ring and a mystery book from her father to keep for safekeeping eight hundred years earlier, on the verge of a horrific crusade that will split apart southern France. He claims that the ring, which has a labyrinth engraved on it, will reveal the location of a Grail guardian, and that the book has the clue to the real Grail. To protect the labyrinth’s secret now, while crusading troops assemble outside Carcassonne’s city walls, a great sacrifice will be necessary.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What we leave behind in this life is the memory of who we were and what we did. An imprint, no more.”
“History is written by the victorious, the liars, the strongest, the most determined.”
“Too often I am jealous and my jealousy leads me to say things-things-that I regret.”
“What will happen will happen, whether I wish it or not. So, yes, I accept. It does not mean that I like it or wish it were not otherwise.”
“There was no nobility in war. Only suffering.”
East London in 1888: a unique metropolis. Where thieves, whores, and dreamers coexist, where kids play in the cobblestone streets during the day and a killer pursues at night, where bright hopes collide with the harshest realities. Together with her longtime partner, Joe Bristow, a costermonger’s son, Fiona Finnegan, a worker at a tea factory, dreams of one day owning a shop here by the Thames. Fiona and Joe struggle, save and make sacrifices to pursue their aspirations with nothing but their shared faith in each other as motivation.
But when a cruel and evil guy takes almost everything and everyone Fiona cares about from her, her life is ruined. She is compelled to leave London for New York out of fear for her own life. There, she is propelled by her unwavering spirit to ascend from a little West Side storefront to the top of Manhattan’s tea trade. In order to put an end to Fiona’s old ghosts, she must travel back to the London of her youth. There, a lethal encounter with her past serves as the key to her future.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“We’re not punished for our sins, lad. We’re punished by them.”
“She was his soulmate, as much a part of him as the very flesh and bone that made him. She was with him, in him, in everything he did. She was everything he wanted from his life, the very measure of his dreams.”
“Men are the weak ones, luv. Didn’t you know? Oh, you make a lot of noise, but its the women who are strong. Where it counts. In ‘ere,”
“I’ve always admired your rather formidable will, your refusal to back away from difficulties, but sometimes strength isn’t about perseverance. Sometimes it’s about knowing when to quit.”
“Funny, ‘ow you can ‘old a jewel in your ‘and, and toss it away, and not even know what you ‘ad until it’s gone.”
Mary Jane, a fourteen-year-old in Baltimore in the 1970s, loves to cook with her mother, sing in the church choir, and take advantage of her family’s membership in the Broadway Show Tunes of the Month record club. She is happy to get a summer job as a nanny again for the daughter of a local doctor despite being quiet, reserved, and bookish. Decent employment, according to Mary Jane’s mother. in a dignified home.
The house may have a nice outside, but the interior is a literal and figurative disaster with takeout for dinner, cereal, and IMPEACHMENT: Now More Than Ever bumper stickers covering the doors. And to make matters worse, the physician is a psychiatrist who has scheduled his entire summer to focus on helping a well-known rock singer dry out. The rock star and his wife, a movie actress, move in a week after Mary Jane begins.
Mary Jane exposes her new family to clean, ironed clothes and a regular dinnertime schedule throughout the course of the summer while also getting a close-up view of the liberal world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (not to mention group therapy). Mary Jane will arrive in September with a fresh perspective on what she wants out of life and what type of person she is going to be, caught between the way of life she has always known and the future she has only recently learned is attainable.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“… I hadn’t understood that people you loved could do things you didn’t love. And, still, you could keep loving them.”
“In the Cone family, there was no such thing as containment. Feelings were splattered around the household with the intensity of a spraying firehouse. I was terrified of what I might witness or hear tonight. But along with that terror, my fondness for the Cones only grew. To feel something was to feel alive. And to feel alive was starting to feel like love.”
“Part of being alive is figuring out the balance between what you want, what you need, and what you have with what you don’t want, don’t need, and don’t have.”
“It had never before occurred to me that sometimes dishes weren’t just dishes, that things could represent ideas in more powerful ways than the ideas themselves.”
“Fear, I suddenly realized, was an emotion that ran through my home with the constant, buzzing current of a plugged-in appliance.”
According to the writers of this empowering manual for self-improvement, the corporate “yes man,” the wife-beater, the hot-shot male junior executive, and the emotionally detached parent are all boys posing as men. They observe signs of “Boycaps per book psychology,” which manifests in men’s abusive actions, apathy, and incapacity to act creatively, everywhere around us while writing within a Jungian framework. Moore and Gillette identify four archetypes of masculine energies from myth and literature that can help men develop into more nurturing and mature individuals: the Lover, who is full of life and sensitivity; the Magician, who directs the processes of inner and outer transformation; the selfless and wise King, who is associated with Adam or primordial man; and the Warrior, whose energies frequently go awry in destructive activity. A clear, simple map of the regions of the masculine ego is provided, and it includes methods such as dream interpretation, meditation, Jungian “active imagination,” and ritual practices.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“True humility, we believe, consists of two things. The first is knowing our limitations. And the second is getting the help we need.”
“the positive Warrior energy destroys only what needs to be destroyed in order for something new and fresh, more alive and more virtuous to appear.”
“Being blessed has tremendous psychological consequences for us. There are even studies that show that our bodies actually change chemically when we feel valued, praised, and blessed.”
“Archetypes cannot be banished or wished away.”
“Only a massive rebirth of courage in both men and women will rescue the world.”
A deal with the devil. Evangeline Jenner has enlisted the aid of the most notorious criminal in London in her desperate attempt to get away from her cunning kin. There is only one possible outcome: a convenient union. The timid, stuttering wallflower and the sinfully attractive viscount were unlikely partners. But it soon becomes apparent that Evie has a secret power, and Sebastian wants her more than any other woman he has ever met.
Evie makes a deal with the devil in an effort to regain her husband’s heart. If Sebastian can remain celibate for three months, she would let him into her bed. Sebastian makes the decision to put his own life in danger in order to defend his wife Evie when she is attacked by a bitter adversary from the past. For the sake of their intense love, they will fight against their dangerous destiny together.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“A man’s vanity is more fragile than you might think. It’s easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”
“Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”
“I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs, and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.”
“I’ll take your bet,” he said grimly. “I’m going to win it. And in three months, I’m going to put this back on your finger, and take you to bed, and do things to you that are outlawed in the civilized world.”
“It’s a mistake, you know. You have no idea of what you’ll be exposed to…the obscenities and lewd comments, the lecherous gazes, the groping and pinching…and that’s just at my house. Imagine what it would be like here.”
“If my love can hold you, I’ll keep you with me.”
Grendel is a novel written by American novelist John Gardner in 1971. It is a retelling of a portion of the Old English poem Beowulf from the antagonist, Grendel’s, point of view. Grendel is characterized as an antihero in the literature.
The first and most terrible monster in English literature, Beowulf, gives his side of the event in a book dubbed “one of the finest of our current fictions” by William Gass.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“When I was a child I truly loved:
Unthinking love as calm and deep
As the North Sea. But I have lived,
And now I do not sleep.”
“I understand that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. all the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly – as blindly as all that is not myself pushes back. I create the whole universe, blink by blink.”
“I couldn’t go on, too conscious all at once of my whispering, my eternal posturing, always transforming the world with words–changing nothing.”
“Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.”
“There is no limit to desire but desire’s needs.”
After being assigned to guard a deserted army post, John Dunbar found himself alone and on the outskirts of civilization. Thievery and survival soon led him into the Indian camp, where he embarked on a perilous journey that would change his life forever. Relive the thrill and beauty of the breathtaking film Dances with Wolves.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“He had fallen in love with this wild, beautiful country and everything it contained. It was the kind of love people dream of having with other people: selfless and free of doubt, reverent and everlasting.”
“There are times when a person wants something so badly that price or condition cease to be obstacles.”
“He did not belong to the Indians. He did not belong to the whites. And it was not time for him to belong to the stars.
He belonged right where he was. He belonged nowhere.”
“Lieutenant Dunbar had fallen in love. He had fallen in love with this wild, beautiful country and everything it contained. It was the kind of love people dream of having with other people: selfless and free of doubt, reverent and everlasting. His”
“He did not belong to the Indians. He did not belong to the whites. And it was not time for him to belong to the stars.
He belonged right where he was now. He belonged nowhere.”
Lev Beniov is captured for thieving during the Nazi siege of Leningrad and put into the same cell as a gorgeous deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are offered the opportunity to save their own lives by following an insane directive: obtain a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. Lev and Kolya go on a hunt through the dreadful lawlessness of Leningrad and beyond enemy lines to locate the impossible in a city cut from all supplies and suffering extraordinary starvation.
City of Thieves is a compelling, cinematic World War II adventure and an emotional coming-of-age story with a total current feel for how boys become men, at turns smart and humorous, exhilarating and horrifying.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I’ve always envied people who sleep easily. Their brains must be cleaner, the floorboards of the skull well swept, all the little monsters closed up in a steamer trunk at the foot of the bed.”
“Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.”
“the loneliest sound in the world is other people making love.”
“I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn’t help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion.”
“You don’t like the girl. You don’t know what color eyes she has, you don’t like her.”
Lida believed she was secure. Lida is not Jewish, but her neighbors who were all sporting a yellow star were all taken away. She’ll be alright, I’m sure of it. But she is powerless to stop the atrocities of World War II. In addition to losing her beloved sister Larissa, Lida also loses her parents. Lida is taken by the Nazis to a harsh labor camp where she and other Ukrainian youngsters are made to perform torturous labor. Lida bonds with her fellow inmates while starving and in fear, but none of them are sure if they will live to see tomorrow.
Lida is unable to bear the idea of assisting the enemy when she and her friends are tasked with making bombs for the German army. Then she has an inspiration. What if she tampered with the bombs… and the Nazis? Can she achieve it without being discovered? Will she ever locate her sister again if she is released? This heart-pounding thriller of survival, fortitude, and hope depicts a lesser-known period in history – and is likely to keep readers engrossed until the very last page.
Firefly Lane is for anybody who has ever sipped a glass of Boone’s Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. It’s more than a coming-of-age narrative; it’s about a generation of women who were simultaneously fortunate and cursed by their decisions. It’s about broken promises, secrets, and betrayals. Finally, it’s about the one individual who actually knows you—-and understands what has the potential to hurt you… and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you’ll never forget… and one you’ll want to tell your closest friend about.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing.”
“One thing I can tell you for sure is this: we only regret what we don’t do in life.”
“Thoughts – even fears – were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice, and once given that weight, they could crush you.”
“Of course, you can fall in love. You just have to let yourself. They don’t call it falling for nothing.”
“I guess no one stays friends for more than thirty years without broken hearts along the way.”
The Wilhelm Gustloff, a German cruise ship that was meant to transport wartime staff and refugees to safety from the advancing Red Army, was sunk by a Soviet submarine on January 30, 1945, in the Baltic Sea. While the Titanic and Lusitania are both well-documented tragedies, they are not the greatest maritime tragedy in history. Over 10,500 passengers boarded the ship, which had a maximum capacity of 1,800, and over 9,000 people, including 5,000 children, died as a result.
To reflect the true tragedy, Sepetys (author of “Between Shades of Gray”) creates four fabricated but historically accurate voices. As Russian troops advance, Joana, a Lithuanian nurse with nursing experience, Florian, a Prussian soldier escaping the Nazis with looted treasure, and Emilia, a pregnant Polish girl, all begin their escape journeys. Each will eventually run into Albert, a Nazi peon with egotistical delusions who is delegated to the Gustloff decks.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I wept because i had no shoes,
until i met a man who had no feet.”
“I became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.”
“What had human beings become? Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?”
“How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.”
“Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.”
Treasure Island has never been topped for pure storytelling fun and adventure. The story creates settings and characters that have captured the imaginations of generations of readers, starting with the first time young Jim Hawkins meets the evil Blind Pew at the Admiral Benbow Inn and ending with the final struggle for riches on a tropical island. The novel revolves around the struggle between good and evil but in this instance a particularly interesting variety of evil. It was written by a fantastic prose stylist who is a master of both action and mood. The pace of this story of betrayal, greed, and bravery is set by the villainy of that most ambiguous outlaw, Long John Silver.
Treasure Island, in the words of G. K. Chesterton, “is the realization of an ideal, that which is vowed in its suggestive and beckoning map; a vision not only of white skeletons but also of green palm trees and sapphire seas,” created to forever stoke a dream of high romance and far-off horizons. There will always be a place for tales like Treasure Island that can make boys and old men happy, according to G. S. Fraser, who calls it “a completely original work.”
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Sir, with no intention to take offence, I deny your right to put words into my mouth.”
“Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!”
“Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It’s the glory of the sea that has turned my head.”
“We must go on, because we can’t turn back.”
“If you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!”
Kurt Andersen demonstrates in this expansive, expressive history of America that what is taking on in our society right now—this post-factual, “fake news” period that we are all experiencing—is not a novel development but rather the pinnacle manifestation of our cultural identity. Wishful thinkers, magical thinkers, true believers, hucksters, and their suckers established America. Our DNA contains deep-seated fantasy.
Through the course of five centuries, from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the wild and crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials, our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we’ve never fully acknowledged. Since the beginning, our ultra-individualism has been associated with epic imaginations and dreams; every citizen is free to pretend to be absolutely anyone or to believe absolutely anything. Andersen investigates if the great American experiment in liberty has gone awry with the joyous erudition and tell-it-like-it-is intensity of Christopher Hitchens.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries; run it through the anything-goes 1960s and the Internet age; the result is the America we inhabit today, where reality and fantasy are weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled.”
“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”
“The disagreements dividing Protestants from Catholics were about the internal consistency of the magical rules within their common fantasy scheme.”
“Let me quote once more from Tolkien’s lecture, which he delivered a few months before the fantasy-besotted Nazis started World War II. “Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came.”
“Before the Internet, crackpots were mostly isolated and surely had a harder time remaining convinced of their alternate realities. Now their devoutly believed opinions are all over the airwaves and the Web, just like actual news. Now all the fantasies look real.”
An unlikely heroine and healer emerge in the form of a housemaid named Anna Frith after a plague-infected bolt of fabric spreads from London to a remote village. As Anna and her fellow villagers battle the spread of disease and superstition, we follow the events of the tragic year of 1666 through Anna’s eyes. Anna must muster the will to face the breakdown of her society and the allure of forbidden love as death seeps into every home and the people switch from prayers to bloodthirsty witch-hunting. A year of calamity turns into annus mirabilis, or a “year of miracles,” as she strives to live and develop. Year of Wonders is a vividly detailed portrayal of a unique period in history that was inspired by the historical story of Eyam, a community in the rough hill region of England.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“How little we know, I thought, of the people we live amongst.”
“Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.”
“It is a great thing to be young and to live without pain. And yet it is a blessing few of us count until we lose it.”
“It was a voice full of light and dark. Light not only as it glimmers, but also as it glares. Dark not only as it brings cold and fear, but also as it gives rest and shade.”
“Here we are, alive, and you and I will have to make it what we can.”
Inspired by the actual account of a lady who revolutionized how we perceive the world. Three talented young anthropologists are forced together in the New Guinean bush in 1933. They are Andrew Bankson, who accidentally enters the life of this peculiar couple and becomes utterly charmed, and Nell Stone, who is interesting, magnetic, and well-known for her contentious research on South Pacific cultures. Within a few months, the trio is creating its best work yet, but soon their relationships, jobs, and, eventually, lives are threatened by an uncontrollable firestorm of furious love and jealousy.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.”
“You don’t realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can’t understand the words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren’t always the most reliable thing.”
“I asked her if she believed you could ever truly understand another culture. I told her the longer I stayed, the more asinine the attempt seemed, and that what I’d become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilisation, right and wrong.”
“He is wine and bread and deep in my stomach.”
“Perhaps all science is merely self-investigation.”
Mary Lennox, an orphan, moves into her uncle’s magnificent home on the Yorkshire Moors and discovers it to be full of mysteries. Although there are almost one hundred rooms in the home, her uncle keeps himself locked up. She also occasionally hears weeping along one of the lengthy hallways at night. Mary’s only refuge is the sprawling property’s gardens. Then, Mary finds a walled-off, locked garden that is locked with a lost key. One day, she finds a way in with the aid of two unanticipated friends. Can Mary bring the garden back to life, or is everything there dead?
The Secret Garden, one of the most endearing and lasting masterpieces of children’s literature, has remained a solid favorite with kids all over the world ever since it first appeared. It was first released in The American Magazine in 1910 as a serial story before being published as a novel in 1911.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done–then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
“She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.”
“Where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow.”
“It made her think that it was curious how much nicer a person looked when he smiled. She had not thought of it before.”
The majority of the year is spent in winter at the border of the Russian wilderness when snowdrifts tower over buildings. Vasilisa doesn’t mind, though, because she loves spending the cold winter nights cuddling up next to her darling siblings and listening to their nurse tell fairy tales. She adores the terrifying tale of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon that arrives in the icy night to seize the souls of the unwary. According to her nurse, wise Russians revere the spirits of the house, yard, and forest that guard their houses against evil and fear him.
Vasilisa’s father travels to Moscow in search of a new wife after her mother passes away. Vasilisa’s new stepmother, a fiercely devout city girl, prevents her family from worshipping the home spirits. The family agrees, but Vasilisa is terrified because she feels that more depends on their traditions than everyone is aware of. Indeed, crops start to fail, woodland monsters get closer, and bad luck follows the village. While this is going on, Vasilisa’s stepmother becomes sterner and sterner in her efforts to prepare her disobedient stepdaughter for marriage or incarceration in a convent.
Vasilisa must overcome the people she loves and use hazardous abilities that she has long kept hidden as danger looms over her in order to defend her family from an evil that seems to have emerged from her nurse’s scariest stories. A talented and beautiful voice debuts with The Bear and Nightingale, a lovely book. It proclaims the presence of a unique ability while casting an alluring enchantment.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Nothing changes, Vasya. Things are, or they are not. Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than as you willed it.”
“Wild birds die in cages.”
“It is a cruel task, to frighten people in God’s name.”
“Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya. And both are mine.”
“I do not understand “damned.” You are. And because you are, you can walk where you will, into peace, oblivion, or pits of fire, but you will always choose.”
A large, impactful tale of men in battle written over the span of 35 years by a Vietnam War veteran with a lot of decorations. Matterhorn is a visceral and enthralling book about what it’s like to be a young man at war that was written over the period of thirty years by a highly decorated Vietnam veteran. It is a remarkable book that turns the tragedy of the Vietnam War into a stirring tale of bravery, teamwork, and sacrifice that can be applied to any conflict. It is also a tribute to the literary ability to redeem human suffering.
Karl Marlantes, a Yale University graduate and Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, served in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. He was given the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for bravery, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals for his service. His debut book is this one. He resides in a little town in Washington.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“It was all absurd, without reason or meaning. People who didn’t know each other were going to kill each other over a hill none of them cared about”
“Victory in combat is like sex with a prostitute. For a moment you forget everything in the sudden physical rush, but then you have to pay your money to the woman showing you the door. You see the dirt on the walls and your sorry image in the mirror.”
“Over time, continual bad news will discourage any civilian population, and Americans had the lowest tolerance on the planet for bad news.”
“He lay before God as a woman opens herself to a man, with legs apart, stomach exposed, arms open. But unlike some women, he did not have the inner strength that allowed them to do such a thing without fear. There was no woman’s strength in Mellas at all.”
“The chanting went on, the musicians giving in to the rhythm of their own being, finding healing in touching that rhythm, and healing in chanting about death, the only real god they knew.”
The Henna Artist offers a door into a world that is at once rich and interesting, stark and terrible, and it does so through a vivid and riveting depiction of one woman’s battle for fulfillment in a society that oscillates between the traditional and the modern.
Lakshmi, a seventeen-year-old woman fleeing a violent marriage, travels by herself to Jaipur, a bustling city painted pink in the 1950s. She becomes the most sought-after henna artist—and confidante—among the affluent upper-class women there. She can never share her own secrets while being trusted by the richest people.
Lakshmi, who is renowned for her innovative designs and wise counsel, must take care to stay away from the envious rumor mongers who could destroy her reputation and her source of income. She is astonished one day as she pursues her goal of living independently by her husband, who has located her many years later with a vivacious little girl in tow—a sister Lakshmi had no idea she had. Suddenly, the protective caution she has painstakingly developed is in jeopardy. She persists even while things are difficult, using her skills to help those around her.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Success was ephemeral—and fluid—as I’d found out the hard way. It came. It went. It changed you from the outside, but not from the inside. Inside, I was still the same girl who dreamed of a destiny greater than she was allowed. Did I really need the house to prove I had skill, talent, ambition, intelligence? What if—”
“there were three kinds of karma: the accumulated karma from all our past lives; the karma we created in this life; and the karma we stored to ripen in our future lives.”
“People are more gullible and less compassionate than any of us want to believe.”
“At this moment, sitting in front of this good, sensible woman, I wanted the thing I hated most in this world. Sympathy. Even more, I hated that I wanted it. Hated myself for my weakness.”
“Before independence, these objects had signified my ladies’ admiration for the British. Now, they signified their scorn. My ladies had changed nothing but the reasons for their pretense. If I had learned anything from them, it was this: only a fool lives in water and remains an enemy of the crocodile.”
I was shaken by the train’s motion like a baby. I closed my eyes and envisioned the sign that I had only ever seen in Gideon’s stories: “Manifest—A Town with a Rich Past and a Bright Future.” I looked out at the dusty landscape. Tucker feels left behind. Her father has boarded a train and is sending her away to spend the summer with an old acquaintance while he works a railroad job. Abilene climbs off the train in Manifest, Kansas with just a few items and her list of universals in order to find out more about the boy her father used to be.
Abilene is unhappy to learn that Manifest is just a dried-up, worn-out old town after hearing stories about it. But when she comes across a secret cigar box filled with keepsakes, including some ancient letters that make reference to a spy known as the Rattler, her sadness rapidly transforms into excitement. Even though they are instructed to “Leave Well Enough Alone,” these enigmatic messages set Abilene and her new friends Lettie and Ruthanne on a genuine spy hunt.
When Abilene decides to travel down the enigmatic Path to Perdition to settle a debt with the solitary Miss Sadie, a diviner who only reveals tales from the past, she disregards all warnings. It appears that Manifest’s past is rife with eccentric and shady characters—as well as long-kept secrets. Abilene becomes more determined to find out exactly what part her father played in that history the more she hears.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Memories were like sunshine. They warmed you up and left a pleasant glow, but you couldn’t hold them.”
“Who would dream that one can love without being crushed under the weight of it?”
“…the person you encounter is often more than the person you see.”
“When there is suffering, we look for a reason. That reason is easiest found within oneself.”
“Maybe the world wasn’t made of universals that could be summed up in neat little packages. Maybe there were just people. People who were tired and hurt and lonely and kind in their own way and their own time.”
Thermopylae was a steep mountain pass in northern Greece where three hundred of the feared and revered Spartan troops were stationed. To defend the pass against the advancing millions of the powerful Persian army, it was their suicide mission.
They resisted the horrific onslaught day after bloody day, affording the Greeks some time to gather their forces. The Spartans would be recognized for the best military battle in history—one that would not finish until the rocks were awash in blood, leaving only one badly injured Spartan squire to tell the tale. They were born into a cult of spiritual heroism, physical endurance, and unsurpassed war prowess.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
“You have never tasted freedom, friend,” Dienekes spoke, “or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.”
“The opposite of fear,” Dienekes said, “is love.”
“As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.”
“He who whets his steel, whets his courage”
Wide Sargasso Sea, a work of modern literature, marked Jean Rhys’s comeback to the literary spotlight. She was well renowned for her outstanding prose, haunting female characters, and astonishing early career. She cleverly illuminates one of fiction’s most fascinating characters—the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre—in Wide Sargasso Sea, her final and best-selling book. Antoinette Cosway, a voluptuous and shielded young woman who is traded into marriage to the arrogant Mr. Rochester, is introduced to us in this captivating piece. Cosway is portrayed by Rhys in a setting where the level of sexual inequality and racial hatred is so extreme that it practically drives a woman insane. The work’s ongoing significance is emphasized in a new introduction by Claire of the Sea Light author and award-winning author Edwidge Danticat. She enriches Rhys’s and her remarkable work by drawing on her own Caribbean heritage.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You can pretend for a long time, but one day it all falls away and you are alone. We are alone in the most beautiful place in the world…”
“There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.”
“I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour, I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her. For she belonged to the magic and the loveliness. She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.”
“If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We’ll see who hates best. But first, first I will destroy your hatred. Now. My hate is colder, stronger, and you’ll have no hate to warm yourself. You will have nothing.”
“And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?”
In this suspenseful fantasy set in turn-of-the-century France, a teenage witch breaks free from a curse to find her world turned upside down. The Chanceaux Valley’s famed wine is produced in the vineyards at Château Renard thanks to the skill of their vine witches, whose magic has been relied upon for ages. Then, when sorcière Elena Boureanu was taken by surprise by a curse, the art of harvest divination was destroyed. After breaking the curse that kept Elena in the marshy shallows and diminished her magic, Elena is now attempting to resume her previous life. Additionally, a handsome stranger now owns the vineyard that she intended to inherit.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“What the eye couldn’t see, the imagination filled in. We put names to the unexplained. Cast it as something to either fear or worship. And yet just because a thing can’t be seen doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“The heart had a tendency to harden off after being forced to survive inside a life two sizes too small, deprived of the oxygen of dreams.”
“We put names to the unexplained. Cast it as something to either fear or worship. And yet just because a thing can’t be seen doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”
“she debated the wisdom of not having waited longer for someone more suitably dressed to pass by on the road. Now she regretted how the stolen coat smelled”
“Intuition knows the truth when heard, but the sound can leave a terrible ringing in the ears.”
Whitney Stone, fresh from her successes in Paris society, returns to England focused on winning the affection of her childhood sweetheart. Whitney is the cost of her father’s agreement with the haughty Duke of Claymore, which he reached in order can save himself from disaster.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“You will soon discover that in matters of the heart, memories are much kinder than reality”
“We all do foolish things when we are in love. Don’t we, your grace?”
“Sometimes it just happens – to the wrong people at the wrong time.”
“I want more from life than that and I have more to give.”
“You can’t condemn me for wanting you, unless you condemn every other man who has.”
However, the gossip columnists are mistaken this time. Not only has Anthony Bridgerton decided to be married; but he has also selected a spouse! The only problem is Kate Sheffield, his intended’s older sister, who is the most intrusive person to ever enter a London ballroom. With her tenacity in trying to thwart the engagement, the vivacious schemer is driving Anthony insane, yet when he shuts his eyes at night, Kate is the woman who appears in his increasingly sexy fantasies.
Kate is certain that, contrary to popular perception, rehabilitated rakes do not make the ideal husbands, and Anthony Bridgerton is the evilest rogue of them all. Kate is adamant about keeping her sister safe, but she worries that her own heart is weak. And when Anthony touches her lips, she gets a sudden fear that she won’t be strong enough to resist the disgusting rake herself.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Love’s about finding the one person who makes your heart complete. Who makes you a better person than you ever dreamed you could be. Its about looking in the eyes of your wife and knowing all the way to your bones that she’s simply the best person you’ve ever known.”
“Suddenly it was too hard to be in his presence, too painful to know that he would belong to someone else.”
“I have to tell you it was the first time even after all these years of expecting my own death that i truly knew what it meant to die because with you gone there was nothing left for me to live for.”
“Weakness never got anyone anywhere.”
“This has to be the most self-centered thing I’ve ever said, but no, I think you just wanted to vex me.”
Marianne Daventry will do anything to get away from Bath’s monotony and an undesired suitor’s seductive advances. She, therefore, seizes the opportunity when her twin sister, Cecily, extends an offer for her to join her at a vast country house. Marianne anticipates being able to unwind and take in the beautiful English countryside while her sister woos the dashing heir of Edenbrooke, but she soon learns that even the best-laid plans may go haywire.
Marianne finds herself caught up in an unforeseen adventure with enough romance and excitement to keep her thoughts racing, including a harrowing run-in with a highwayman and an apparently innocent infatuation. Will Marianne be able to control her wayward heart, or will she be taken aback by an enigmatic stranger? When Fate transported Marianne to Edenbrooke, it wasn’t just for a carefree summer.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I hope you do not let anyone else’s expectations direct the course of your life.”
“There’s something solid and constant about trees.” I said quietly. “They may change through the seasons, but they’re always there. They’re dependable.”
“Isn’t that what a gentleman does? Rescues a damsel in distress?”
“When you are not with me, I am left with nothing but longing for you.”
“Don’t think because I tease you that I don’t take you seriously.”
In disguise as a housemaid, Margaret Macy leaves London with a plan to marry her off to an unethical guy. She will inherit money and independence if she can avoid getting married until her next birthday. She had no intention of actually working as a servant, though. And definitely not in the house of Lewis and Nathaniel Upchurch, two past suitors.
When suspicions are raised and nosy onlookers arrive at Fairbourne Hall, Margaret struggles to conceal her identity while she stumbles through the first meaningful work of her life. Can she evade a trap that will draw her out of hiding?
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I found I quite enjoyed having you under the same roof. Being able to see you, hear your voice many times a day. I miss that.” His eyes locked on hers. “I miss you.”
“Seeing you puts me in mind of a piece of French chocolate.” She swallowed and took another step backward. “If one wants to discover what is inside, one must first remove the foreign wrapping.”
“Her voice sounding young and nearly giddy in her ears, she asked, “Are you certain, sir, you ought to kiss a housemaid?” No answering chuckle. “I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” he whispered, his breath tickling her upper lip with each syllable.”
“Did you tell her?” “Tell her what?” “That you love her?”
“Yet never have I longed to kiss any woman’s hands as I long to kiss these.”
R. F. Kuang’s 2018 book, The Poppy War, was distributed by Harper Voyager. The Poppy War is a grimdark fantasy with a conflict modeled on the Second Sino-Japanese War and an ambiance influenced by the Song dynasty that derives its plot and politics from mid-20th century China. This epic historic military fantasy, inspired by the brutal history of China’s twentieth century and replete with treachery and magic, is in the vein of Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings and N.K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy marks the thrilling debut of a tremendously innovative genius.
It was a surprise to everyone when Rin aced the Keju—the Empire-wide test to identify the brightest young people to study at the Academies. The test administrators couldn’t believe a war orphan from Rooster Province could pass without cheating; Rin’s guardians thought they’d finally be capable of marrying her off and further their criminal enterprise; Rin herself realized she was finally free from the servitude and despair that had been her daily existence.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.”
“I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.”
“Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.”
“We aren’t here to be sophisticated. We’re here to fuck people up.”
“I don’t love you. And I can kill anything.”
Gold country in California in 1850. a time when ladies traded their bodies for a bed and men exchanged their souls for a bag of riches. Angel only anticipates betrayal from men. She was forced into prostitution as a young girl and now lives off of her resentment. She despises males who take advantage of her and leave her feeling hollow and lifeless inside.
Michael Hosea then enters her life. Michael Hosea, a man who always attempts to understand his Father’s will, complies with God’s command to wed Angel and to love her without conditions. He defies Angel’s every harsh expectation gradually, day by day, until, in spite of her resistance, her frozen heart starts to thaw.
But her sudden softening brought with it tremendous feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. Angel then flees. Her final recovery must happen from the One who adores her even more than Michael Hosea does—the One who will never let her go. She must return to the darkness, away from her husband’s chasing love, afraid of the reality she can no longer deny. An inspiring tale of God’s unfailing, atoning, and all-consuming love.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“I want you to love me. I want you to trust me enough to let me love you, and I want you to stay here with me so we can build a life together. That’s what I want”
“my love isn’t a weapon, it’s a lifeline, reach out and take hold, and don’t let go!”
“I want to be free Michael, just for once in my whole life I want to be free”
“You are free. You just don’t know it yet”
“Love is the way back into Eden. It is the way back to life.”
When Hazel and James first see each other at a party in London in 1917, World War I is at its height. He is a recently discharged soldier with aspirations to become an architect, and she is a bashful pianist with musical potential. When they first fall in love, it is intense and sudden; but, when James is sent to the killing fields, their relationship is broken.
Aubrey Edwards is also making her way to the front lines. He is a part of the 15th New York Infantry, an all-African American unit being transported to Europe to aid at the end of the Great War, and is a talented musician who has performed at Carnegie Hall. The very last thing in his head is love. However, that is before he meets Belgian chanteuse Colette Fournier, who has already endured horrific tragedy at the hands of Germans.
The Greek goddess Aphrodite narrates the tales of these four lovers to her husband, Hephaestus, and her lover, Ares, in an opulent Manhattan hotel suite during the height of World War II, thirty years after their fortunes meet. Why are Love and War inevitably driven to one another, she asks, in an age-old question? But in her search for a resolution that will appease her envious husband, she unearths a complex story of discrimination, trauma, and music and shows that Love is stronger than War.
The Passion of Dolssa author, who won the Printz Award, returns with a grand, multi-layered romance with a supernatural twist that takes place during the terrible years of World Wars I and II.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“If music stops, and art ceases, and beauty fades, what have we then?”
“The most ordinary mortal bodies are housed by spectacular souls.”
“The first casualty of war is the truth.”
“I envy the mortals. It’s because they’re weak and damaged that they can love.”
“You’re a brand-new piece of sheet music,’ she said slowly, ‘for a song which, once played, I’d swear I’d always known.”
It is the year 1945. Former combat medic Claire Randall, who is currently on her second honeymoon with her husband after returning from the war, crosses a standing stone in one of the historic rings that dot the British Isles. In a Scotland tore apart by conflict and plundering border clans in the year of Our Lord…1743, she finds herself suddenly a Sassenach—an “outlander.”
Claire is propelled back in time by unknown powers, thrusting her into the schemes of lairds and spies that could endanger her life and break her heart. Because James Fraser, a brave young Scotsman, demonstrates to Claire an unwavering love that causes her divided between fidelity and desire as well as between two fundamentally different men with two incompatible lifestyles.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary”
“Don’t be afraid. There’s the two of us now.”
“I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.”
“Sometimes our best action result in things that are most regrettable.”
“And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, why is my honor not a suitable exchange for your life?”
The Secret Life of Bees is a 1964 South Carolina-set novel about Lily Owens, whose life has been molded by the vague recollection of the afternoon her mother was murdered. Lily chooses to set both of the town’s most virulent racists free when Rosaleen, her strong-willed black “stand-in mother,” taunts them. They flee to Tiburon, South Carolina, a place where the truth about her mother’s background may be found. Lily is taken in by an oddball group of three black beekeeping sisters, who show her around their fascinating world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna. Women will share and pass on this amazing book on divine female strength to their daughters for many years to come.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Someone who thinks death is the scariest thing doesn’t know a thing about life.”
“If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.”
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”
“It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”
“Sunset is the saddest light there is.”
A daughter is born at the home of Helios, the sun god and most powerful of the Titans. Circe, however, is an odd child who lacks her mother’s cruel allure or her father’s might. She seeks out the company of people and learns that she does have power—the power of witchcraft, which may turn enemies into monsters and endanger the gods.
Zeus exiles her to a barren island because he feels threatened by her. There, she develops her occult skills, tames wild animals, and meets many of the most famous mythological characters, including the Minotaur, Daedalus, and his tragic son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, cunning Odysseus.
However, there is also risk for a woman who acts independently, as Circe unintentionally provokes the fury of both humans and gods, ultimately coming up against one of the most dreadful and cruel Olympians. Circe must muster all her might to defend what she values most and make a final decision over whether she fits with the gods from which she descended or the people she has grown to love, the mortals.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“He showed me his scars, and in return he let me pretend that I had none.”
“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
“I thought: I cannot bear this world a moment longer. Then, child, make another.”
“I would say, some people are like constellations that only touch the earth for a season.”
“You threw me to the crows, but it turns out I prefer them to you.”
A suspenseful book that explores the meteoric rise of a famous rock band from the 1970s and the mystery surrounding their historic breakup. Daisy Jones & The Six are well-known, but up until this point, no one was aware of the exact cause of their breakup at the height of their fame.
Daisy is a young woman coming of age in Los Angeles in the late 1960s who dreams of performing at the Whisky a Go-Go while sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip and sleeping with rock stars. Although the drugs and the sex are exciting, she prefers rock & roll over them all. By the time she is twenty, people are starting to take note of her voice, and she exudes the reckless beauty that drives people crazy.
The Six, a band led by the moody Billy Dunne, is another one that is gaining popularity. Billy’s fiancée Camila finds out she’s pregnant just before their first tour, and under the burden of upcoming fatherhood and stardom, Billy behaves erratically on the road. When a producer decides to pair Daisy and Billy together in order to achieve supercharged success, they come into contact. The events that follow will go down in history.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Men often think they deserve a sticker for treating women like people.”
“I think you have to have faith in people before they earn it. Otherwise it’s not faith, right?”
“It’s like some of us are chasing after our nightmares the way other people chase dreams.”
“If she knew how often I was thinking about her, she wouldn’t feel lonely.”
“Confidence is being okay being bad, not being okay being good.”
Annemarie Johansen, 10, and her closest mate Ellen Rosen frequently reflect on life before World War II. Now in 1943, they must deal with school, food scarcity, and the Nazi army sweeping through Copenhagen. Ellen settles in with the Johansens and poses as one of the family after the Jews of Denmark are “relocated.” Annemarie will soon be requested to undertake a hazardous mission in order to save Ellen’s life.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“She fell asleep, and it was a sleep as thin as the night clouds, dotted with dreams that came and went like the stars.”
“Mama was crying, and the rain made it seem as if the whole world was crying.”
“it is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything”
“The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same. “And they lived happily ever after,”
“The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.”
American author Margaret Mitchell first released her book Gone with the Wind in 1936. During the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era, the story takes place in Clayton County and Atlanta, both in Georgia.
After Sherman’s March to the Sea, Scarlett O’Hara, the gorgeous and privileged daughter of a wealthy plantation owner in Georgia, must rely on all of her resources to dig her way out of poverty.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.”
“After all, tomorrow is another day!”
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
“I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
“I’ll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”
Blood Meridian is an epic book that successfully subverts the tropes of the Western novel and the Wild West legend to tell the story of the brutality and depravity that accompanied America’s westward expansion. It follows the fates of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessee native who falls into a nightmare world where Indians are being killed and the market for their scalps is growing. It is based on actual events that happened on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.”
“Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
“Men of God and men of war have strange affinities.”
“He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”
“There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto.”
Here, readers will find intrigue, frantic action, and passionate romance—everything they have come to expect from Follett. The twelfth century, feudal England, and the topic of the construction of a magnificent cathedral, however, are what set The Pillars of the Earth apart from other novels. Follett has faithfully recreated the gaudy, extravagant England of the Middle Ages. The huge forests, walled cities, castles, and monasteries turn into a recognizable scene.
The master storyteller entices the reader inexorably into the linked lives of his characters into their dreams, labors, and loves against this vividly envisioned and intricately interwoven backdrop, packed with the horrors of war and the rhythms of daily life: Tom, the master builder, Aliena, the stunningly attractive nobility, Philip, the previous of Kingsbridge, Jack, the stone artisan, and Ellen, the curse-casting forest creature round out the cast. Each individual, from the lowly stonemason to the regal ruler, is wonderfully portrayed.
The story is focused on the construction of the cathedral, which features the untrained stonemasons’ almost spooky creativity. Follett spins a tale of betrayal, retaliation, and love around the building site that starts with an innocent man being publicly hanged and ends with a king being humiliated.
Best Quotes from this Book:
“Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.”
“The most expensive part of a building is the mistakes.”
“She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.”
“The duck swallows the worm, the fox kills the duck, the men shoot the fox, and the devil hunts the men.”
“Hunger is the best seasoning.”