Books to fill up the shelf

The Fate of the Tearling
By Erika Johansen
Pages: 496

 In less than a year, Kelsea Glynn has transformed from a gawky teenager into a  powerful monarch. As she has come into her own as the Queen of the Tearling, the  headstrong, visionary leader has also transformed her realm. In her quest to end  corruption and restore justice, she has made many enemies—including the evil Red  Queen, her fiercest rival, who has set her armies against the Tear. To protect her  people from a devastating invasion, Kelsea did the unthinkable—she gave herself and  her magical sapphires to her enemy—and named the Mace, the trusted head of her  personal guards, Regent in her place. But the Mace will not rest until he and his men  rescue their sovereign, imprisoned in Mortmesne.

Faithful
By Alice Hoffman
Pages: 258

Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky?

Faithful is the story of a survivor, filled with emotion. A fan of Chinese food, dogs, bookstores, and men, she should stay away from, Shelby has to fight her way back to her own future. In New York City she finds a circle of lost and found souls—including an angel who’s been watching over her ever since that fateful icy night. Here is a character you will fall in love with, so believable and real and endearing.

Moonglow
By Michael Chabon   
Pages: 448

Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession, made to his grandson, of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and desire and ordinary love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at mid-century and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of the keeping of secrets and the telling of lies. A gripping, poignant, tragicomic, scrupulously researched and wholly imaginary transcript of a life that spanned the dark heart of the twentieth century.

I'll Take You There
By Wally Lamb
Pages: 272

I’ll Take You There centers on Felix, a film scholar who runs a Monday night movie club in what was once a vaudeville theater. One evening, while setting up a film, he’s confronted by the ghost of Lois Weber, a trailblazing motion picture director from Hollywood’s silent film era. Lois invites Felix to revisit—and in some cases relive—scenes from his past as they are projected onto the cinema’s big screen. In these magical movies, the medium of film becomes the lens for Felix to reflect on the women who profoundly impacted his life. Felix comes to look forward to his encounters with Lois. Against the backdrop of a kaleidoscopic convergence of politics and pop culture, family secrets, and Hollywood iconography, Felix gains an enlightened understanding of the pressures.

Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis
By Anne Rice
Pages: 496

 At the novel's center: the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt, hero, leader, inspirer,  irresistible force, irrepressible spirit, battling (and ultimately reconciling with) a  strange otherworldly form that has somehow taken possession of Lestat's  undead body and soul. This ancient and mysterious power and unearthly spirit  of vampire lore has all the force, history, and insidious reach of the unknowable  Universe. It is through this spirit that we come to be told the hypnotic tale of a  great sea power of ancient times; a mysterious heaven on earth situated on a  boundless continent--and of how and why, and in what manner and with what  far-reaching purpose, this force came to build and rule the legendary empire of  centuries ago that thrived in the Atlantic Ocean. And as we learn of the mighty,  far-reaching powers and perfections of this lost kingdom of Atalantaya, the lost  realms of Atlantis, we come to understand its secrets, and how and why the  vampire Lestat, indeed all the vampires, must reckon so many millennia later  with force of this all-powerful Atalantaya spirit.