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List: 2023 Reading Challenge: Unreliable Narrator


A photo of Trust Exercise

Trust Exercise

In 1982 in a southern city, David and Sarah, two freshmen at a highly competitive performing arts high school, thrive alongside their school peers in a rarified bubble, ambitiously devoting themselves to their studies--to music, to movement, to Shakespeare and, particularly, to classes taught by the magnetic acting teacher Mr. Kingsley. It is here in these halls that David and Sarah fall innocently and powerfully into first love. And also where, as this class of students rises through the ranks of high school, the outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and the future, does not affect them--until it does--in a sudden spiral of events that brings a startling close to the first part of this novel.

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The Push

"A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family, about a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for--and everything she feared. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting, supportive mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood's exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter--Violet rejects her mother, screams uncontrollably, and becomes a disturbing, disruptive presence at her preschool. Or is it all in Blythe's head? Her husband, Fox, says she's imagining things. What he sees is an overwhelmed wife who can't cope with the day-to-day grind. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son Sam is born--and with him, Blythe has the natural, blissful connection she'd always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth. Here, we see the making and breaking of a family in crystalline detail, and what it feels like when women are not believed. The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive pageturner that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about our children, and about what happens behind the doors of even the most perfect-looking families. . "--

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Blood Sugar

"'I could just kill you right now!' It's something we've all thought at one time or another. But Ruby has actually acted on it. Three times, to be exact. Though she may be a murderer, Ruby is not a sociopath. She is an animal-loving therapist with a thriving practice. She's felt empathy and sympathy. She's had long-lasting friendships and relationships, and has a husband, Jason, whom she adores. But the homicide detectives at Miami Beach PD are not convinced of her happy marriage. When we meet Ruby, she is in a police interrogation room, being accused of Jason's murder. Which, ironically, is one murder that she did not commit, though a scandal-obsessed public believes differently. As she undergoes questioning, Ruby's mind races back to all the details of her life that led her to this exact moment, and to the three dead bodies in her wake. Because though she may not have killed her husband, Ruby certainly isn't innocent"--

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A photo of The Pallbearers Club

The Pallbearers Club

"A cleverly voiced psychological thriller about an unforgettable--and unsettling--friendship, with blood-chilling twists, crackling wit, and a thrumming pulse in its veins--from the nationally bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song. What if the coolest girl you've ever met decided to be your friend? Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses. Okay, that part was a little weird. So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things--terrifying things--that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right? Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she's making cuts. Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship"--Dust jacket flap.

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Liar, Dreamer, Thief

"Katrina Kim may be broke, the black sheep of her family, and slightly unhinged, but she isn't a stalker. Her obsession with her co-worker, Kurt, is just one of many coping mechanisms--like her constant shape and number rituals, or the way scenes from her favorite children's book bleed into her vision whenever she feels anxious or stressed. But when Katrina finds a cryptic message from Kurt that implies he's aware of her surveillance, her tenuous hold on a normal life crumbles. Driven by compulsion, she enacts the most powerful ritual she has to reclaim control--a midnight visit to the Cayatoga Bridge--and arrives just in time to witness Kurt's suicide. Before he jumps, he slams her with a devastating accusation: his death is all her fault. Horrified, Katrina combs through the clues she's collected about Kurt over the last three years, but each revelation uncovers a menacing truth: for every moment she was watching him, he was watching her. And the past she thought she'd left behind? It's been following her more closely than she ever could have imagined. A gripping page-turner, as well as a sensitive exploration of mental health, Liar, Dreamer, Thief is an intimate portrayal of life in all its complexities--and the dangers inherent in unveiling people's most closely guarded secrets"--

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A photo of We Spread

We Spread

"Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many "incidents." Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny--with a growing sense of unrest and distrust--starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling?"--

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A photo of Survive the Night

Survive the Night

It's November 1991. Nirvana's in the tape deck, George H. W. Bush is in the White House, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer. Josh Baxter, the man behind the wheel, is a virtual stranger to Charlie. They met at the campus ride board, each looking to share the long drive home to Ohio. Both have good reasons for wanting to get away. For Charlie, it's guilt and grief over the shocking murder of her best friend, who became the third victim of the man known as the Campus Killer. For Josh, it's to help care for his sick father--or so he says. The longer she sits in the passenger seat, the more Charlie notices there's something suspicious about Josh, from the holes in his story about his father to how he doesn't want her to see inside the trunk. As they travel an empty, twisty highway in the dead of night, an increasingly anxious Charlie begins to think she's sharing a car with the Campus Killer.

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A photo of The Twyford Code

The Twyford Code

"Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Severely dyslexic and wanting to know more, he took it to his remedial English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her. Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today? Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Iles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. And as he does so, he records the story of his life in the form of voicemails and voice memos for his estranged and long unknown son, a professor of mathematics. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories. The Twyford Code is valuable, and he isn't the only one trying to solve it."--

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A photo of The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.

The Last Confessions of Sylvia P.

Told through three unique interwoven narratives, this novel reimagines a chapter in the life of Sylvia Plath, telling the story behind the creation of her classic, semi-autobiographical novel The bell jar.

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A photo of Dear Child

Dear Child

"A windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare. She says her name is Lena. Lena, who disappeared without a trace 14 years prior. She fits the profile. She has the distinctive scar. But her family swears that she isn't their Lena. The little girl who escaped the woods with her knows things she isn't sharing, and Lena's devastated father is trying to piece together details that don't quite fit. Lena is desperate to begin again, but something tells her that her tormentor still wants to get back what belongs to him...and that she may not be able to truly escape until the whole truth about what happened in the woods finally emerges."--

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A photo of Sunburn

Sunburn

A "novel of psychological suspense about a pair of lovers with the best intentions and the worst luck: two people locked in a passionate yet uncompromising game of cat and mouse. But instead of rules, this game has dark secrets, forbidden desires, inevitable betrayals, and cold-blooded murder. One is playing a long game. But which one?"--

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A photo of The Better Liar

The Better Liar

"Robin Voigt is dead. If Leslie had arrived at her sister's cramped Las Vegas apartment just hours earlier, this would have been their first reunion in a decade. In the years since Robin ran away from home as a teenager, Leslie has stayed in New Mexico, taking care of their dying father even as she began building a family of her own. But when their father passed away, Leslie received a rude awakening: She and Robin would receive the inheritance he left them together--or not at all. Now her half of the money may be beyond her grasp. And unbeknownst to anyone, even her husband, Leslie needs it desperately. When she meets a charismatic young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Robin--and has every reason to leave her past behind--the two make a reckless bargain: Mary will impersonate Robin for a week in exchange for Robin's half of the cash. But neither realizes how high the stakes will become when Mary takes a dead woman's name. Even as Mary begins to suspect Leslie is hiding something, and Leslie realizes the stranger living in her house, babysitting her newborn son, and charming her husband has secrets of her own, Robin's wild, troubled legacy threatens to eclipse them both"--

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A photo of The Good House

The Good House

"The Good House tells the story of Hildy Good, who lives in a small town on Boston's North Shore. Hildy is a successful real-estate broker, good neighbor, mother, and grandmother. She's also a raging alcoholic. Hildy's family held an intervention for her about a year before this story takes place--"if they invite you over for dinner, and it's not a major holiday," she advises "run for your life"--and now she feels lonely and unjustly persecuted. She has also fooled herself into thinking that moderation is the key to her drinking problem. As if battling her demons wasn't enough to keep her busy, Hildy soon finds herself embroiled in the underbelly of her New England town, a craggy little place that harbors secrets. There's a scandal, some mysticism, babies, old houses, drinking, and desire--and a love story between two craggy sixty-somethings that's as real and sexy as you get. An exceptional novel that is at turns hilarious and sobering, The Good House asks the question: What will it take to keep Hildy Good from drinking? For good"--

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They All Fall Down

"It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. Delighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails off to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico, with six strangers--an ex-cop, a chef, a financial advisor, a nurse, a lawyer, a young widow. Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses--and all seven strangers harbor a secret. Danger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keeps the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents keep them suspicious of each other, as one by one . . . They all fall down. For fans of thrilling contemporary suspense like The Woman in Cabin 10, Rachel Howzell Hall's brilliant stand-alone novel modernizes and pays homage to Agatha's Christie's And Then There Were None, bringing a diverse cast of seven sinners to a private island for a reckoning that will leave you breathless"--

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A photo of My Annihilation

My Annihilation

"Japanese literary sensation Fuminori Nakamura's latest novel is as a dark look into human psyche--what turns someone into a killer? Can it be something as small as a suggestion? Turn this page, and you may forfeit your entire life. A confessional diary implicates its reader in a heinous crime, and reveals with disturbing honesty the psychological motives of a killer. With My Annihilation, Fuminori Nakamura, master of literary noir, has constructed a puzzle-box of a narrative that delves relentlessly into the darkest corners of human consciousness, that interrogates the unspeakable thoughts that all humans share and that only monsters act on."--

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A photo of The Guest List

The Guest List

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It's a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride's oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn't wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?

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A photo of Six Suspects

Six Suspects

Vicky Rai, the playboy son of a prominent Indian Cabinet minister has been shot dead by persons unknown at his farmhouse (No. 6) outside Delhi. Six people were partying at his house immediately preceding his death - each one equally liable to have pulled the trigger. In this elaborate mystery reminiscent of Agatha Christie, we the readers are the detectives, as six suspects' lives unravel before our eyes - a bureaucrat, a cannibal, an idiot, an actress, a politician, and a nobody. Each character has their own chapter, three times over, the first being under Suspects; the second under Motives; the third - when all is revealed - under Evidence. Vikas Swarup's finely schematic and audacious plotting will delight the many fans of his acclaimed "Q&A."

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The Stars Undying

"Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god. Stripped of her birthright, Gracia flees the planet--just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit with his volatile lieutenant, Anita. When Gracia and Ceirran's paths collide, Gracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne...if she can win the Commander and his right-hand officer over first. But talking her way into Ceirran's good graces, and his bed, is only the beginning. Dealing with the most powerful man in the galaxy is almost as dangerous as war, and Gracia is quickly torn between an alliance that fast becomes more than political and the wishes of the god--or machine--that whispers in her ear. For Szayet's sake, and her own, Gracia will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before-even if it breaks an empire"--

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A photo of Daisy Darker

Daisy Darker

"After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker's entire family is assembling for Nana's 80th birthday party in Nana's crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours. The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows... Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide goes out and all is revealed. With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker's unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling." --

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A Tidy Nnding

"Linda has lived in a quiet neighborhood ever since fleeing the dark events of her childhood in Wales. Now she sits in her kitchen, wondering if this is all there is--pushing the vacuum around and cooking fish sticks for supper is a far cry from the glamorous lifestyle she sees in the glossy catalogs coming through the mail slot addressed to the previous occupant, Rebecca. Terry isn't perfect--he picks his teeth, tracks dirt through the house, and spends most of his time in front of the TV. But that seems fairly standard--until he starts keeping odd hours at work, at around the same time young women in the town start to go missing. If Linda could track down and befriend Rebecca, maybe some of that enviable lifestyle would rub off on her. But the grass isn't always greener: you can't change who you really are, and criminals can hide behind closed doors"--

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A photo of Dark Things I Adore

Dark Things I Adore

"A debut thriller for fans of Lucy Foley and Liz Moore, Dark Things I Adore is a stunning Gone Girl-esque tale of atonement that proves that in the grasp of manipulative men, women may momentarily fall. But in the hands of fierce women, men will be brought to their knees. Three campfire secrets. Two witnesses. One dead in the trees. And the woman, thirty years later, bent on making the guilty finally pay. 1988. A group of outcasts gather at a small, prestigious arts camp nestled in the Maine woods. They're the painters: bright, hopeful, teeming with potential. But secrets and dark ambitions rise like smoke from a campfire, and the truths they tell will come back to haunt them in ways more deadly than they dreamed. 2018. Esteemed art professor Max Durant arrives at his protégé's remote home to view her graduate thesis collection. He knows Audra is beautiful and brilliant. He knows being invited into her private world is a rare gift. But he doesn't know that Audra has engineered every aspect of their weekend together. Every detail, every conversation. Audra has woven the perfect web. Because Max has a secret only Audra knows about what happened that summer in 1988. The dark things that followed. And even though it won't be easy, Audra knows someone must pay. A searing psychological thriller book of trauma, dark academia, complicity, and revenge, Dark Things I Adore unravels the realities behind campfire legends-the horrors that happen in the dark, the girls who become cautionary tales, and the guilty who go unpunished. Until now"--

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Death in Her Hands

"From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods that ultimately makes her question everything about her new home. While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the nearby forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on her best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems to be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one--one that strikes closer to home. A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, Death in Her Hands asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher"--

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Hex

"Nell Barber, an expelled PhD candidate in Biological Science, is exploring the fine line between poison and antidote. Her mentor, Dr. Joan Kallas, preoccupies her thoughts. Nell frequently finds herself standing in the doorway to Joan's office despite herself. Surrounded by an ex, a best friend, a boyfriend, and a husband, the two scientists are tangled together at the center of a web of illicit relationships, grudges, and obsessions. The six are each burdened by desire and ambition, and as they all cross each other's paths on the university campus, the tensions created set in motion a domino effect of affairs and heartbreak. Nell slowly fills her empty apartment with poisonous plants to study and begins to keep a series of notebooks, all dedicated to Joan. She logs her research and how she spends her days, but the notebooks ultimately become a painstaking map of love. In a dazzling and unforgettable voice, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight has written a spellbinding novel of emotional and intellectual intensity"--

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Never Coming Home

"First comes love. Then comes murder. Lucas Forester didn't hate his wife. Michelle was brilliant, sophisticated and beautiful. Sure, she had extravagant spending habits, that petty attitude, a total disregard for anyone below her status. But she also had a lot to offer. Most notably: wealth that only the one percent could comprehend. For years, Lucas has been honing a flawless plan to inherit Michelle's fortune. Unfortunately, it involves taking a hit out on her. Every track is covered, no trace left behind, and now Lucas plays the grieving husband so well he deserves an award. But when a shocking photo and cryptic note show up on his doorstep, Lucas goes from hunter to prey. Someone is on to him. And they're closing in. Told with dark wit and a sharply feminist sensibility, Never Coming Home is a terrifying tale of duplicity that will have you side-eyeing your spouse as you dash to the breathtaking end"--

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Moon Knight

Marc Spector (a.k.a. Moon Knight/Jake Lockley/Steven Grant) has been fighting criminals and keeping New York City safe for years... or has he? When he wakes up in an insane asylum with no powers and a lifetime's worth of medical records, his whole identity (indentities) are called into question. Something is wrong, but is that something Marc Spector himself?

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The Good Son

""A cool, crafty did-he-do-it thriller...The Good Son will rivet readers of Jo Nesbo and Patricia Highsmith." --A. J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window. The Talented Mr. Ripley meets The Bad Seed in this breathless, chilling psychological thriller by the #1 international bestselling novelist known as "Korea's Stephen King" Who can you trust if you can't trust yourself? Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything's all right at home -- he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs of their stylish Seoul duplex. He can't remember much about the night before; having suffered from seizures for most of his life, Yu-jin often has trouble with his memory. All he has is a faint impression of his mother calling his name. But was she calling for help? Or begging for her life? Thus begins Yu-jin's frantic three-day search to uncover what happened that night, and to finally learn the truth about himself and his family. A shocking and addictive psychological thriller, The Good Son explores the mysteries of mind and memory, and the twisted relationship between a mother and son, with incredible urgency"--

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V for Vendetta

"The seminal graphic novel masterpiece V For Vendetta is available in hardcover in this new deluxe edition, featuring an essay from writer Alan Moore, sketches from artist David Lloyd and other bonus material! A powerful story about loss of freedom and individuality, V For Vendetta takes place in a totalitarian England following a devastating war that changed the face of the planet. In a world without political freedom, personal freedom and precious little faith in anything comes a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask who fights political oppressors through terrorism and seemingly absurd acts. It's a gripping tale of the blurred lines between ideological good and evil. Written by one of the greatest scribes in the history of the medium, Alan Moore, V For Vendetta is considered not only one of the most important graphic novel works ever, but also one of the great works in fiction."--

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A Million Little Pieces

A memoir of drug and alcohol abuse and the rehabilitation experience examines addiction and recovery through the eyes of a man who had taken his addictions to deadly extremes, describing the battle to confront the consequences of his life.

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