The Devil and Miss Prym

For almost fifteen years, old Berta had spent everyday sitting outside, watching over the little village Viscos, talking with her deceased husband. She is waiting for the devill to come, as her husband predicted. One day a stranger appears with the intention of staying one week in the village.

In the woods he buries 11 bars of gold. On the way back he meets Chantal Prym, a young and beautiful barmaid, who is bored of the idyllic scenery and slow pace of life. Regularly she seduces tourists in the hope that one of them will prove to be her escape route. The stranger shows her the buried treasure and promises that it will belong to the villagers if they agree to kill someone.

There is a ferocious battle within the young woman; a battle between her angel and her devil. She sees in the gold the ticket to finally escape. Still, something holds her back.

After some days, she decides to tell what the stranger has proposed, trusting that they will refuse. The people’s reaction, however, plants the seed of doubt inside of Chantal. Now she fears for her own life. As an act of desperation, she plans to abandon Viscos with one of the stranger’s bars. Destiny sends a rogue wolf, which threatens Chantal’s life. The stranger arrives, and both escape.

Meanwhile the villagers assemble to choose their victim. The scapegoat they choose is Berta, since she is already old and serves no purpose in the village. Before the villagers shoot a sedated Berta, Chantal convinces them that under no circumstances murder is justified; our conduct is a matter of control and choice.

The Zahir

The Zahir means 'the obvious' or 'conspicuous' in Arabic. The story revolves around the life of the narrator, a bestselling novelist, and in particular his search for his missing wife, Esther. He enjoys all the privileges that money and celebrity bring. He is suspected of foul play by both the police and the press, who suspect that he may have had a role in the inexplicable disappearance of his wife from their Paris home.

As a result of this disappearance, the protagonist is forced to re-examine his own life as well as his marriage. The narrator is unable to figure out what led to Esther's disappearance. Was she abducted or had she abandoned the marriage? He encounters Mikhail, one of Esther's friends, during a book launch. He learns from Mikhail that Esther, who had been a war correspondent against the wishes of her husband (the protagonist), had left in a search for peace, as she had trouble living with her husband. The author eventually realizes that in order to find Esther he must first find his own self. Mikhail introduces him to his own beliefs and customs, his mission of spreading love by holding sessions in hotels and meeting homeless people living in the streets. He tells the narrator about the voices he hears, and his beliefs related to them. The narrator, who only too frequently falls in love with women, consults with his current lover, Marie, about his encounters with Mikhail. She warns him that Mikhail could be an epileptic. However, she also advises him to search for the Zahir as is his desire, even though she would prefer him to stay with her.

The narrator eventually decides to go in search of his Zahir. As it was Esther who had initially brought Mikhail from Kazakhstan  to France, the protagonist suspects that she may in fact be in Kazakhstan. At first, he is curious about what made Esther leave, but later he realizes that troubles with her relationship with her husband may have been a major reason. As he discovers, she was interested in getting to know herself through the making of carpets. Eventually the narrator meets his Zahir and the outcome of this meeting constitutes the climax of the book. Through the narrator's journey from Paris to Kazakhstan, Coelho explores the various meanings of love and life.

In a recurring theme in the book, Coelho compares marriage with a set of railway tracks which stay together forever but fail to come any closer. The novel is a journey from a stagnant marriage and love to the realization of unseen but ever increasing attraction between two souls.

The Witch of Portobello

As the book begins, Athena is dead. How she ended up that way creates the intrigue sustaining the book. The child, Sherine Khalil renames herself Athena. As a child, she shows a strong religious vocation and reports seeing angels and saints, which both impresses and worries her parents.

She grows into a woman in search of answers to many questions that arise within a person. She has a contented life but her mind is not at ease. So she sets out to find answers to the classical question of "Who am I?" through many experiences. In her quest, she opens her heart to intoxicating powers and becomes a controversial spiritual leader in London.

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The Alchemist

The Alchemist details the journey of an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago. Santiago, believing a recurring dream to be phropetic, decides to travel to the pyramids of Egypt to find treasure. He then tells a lone gypsy about this treasure. As he leaves, the gypsy mentions one thing: If he does find the treasure, she wants 1/10 of it. On the way, he encounters love, danger, opportunity, disaster and learns a lot about himself and the ways of the world. One of the significant characters that he meets is an old king named Melchizedek who tells him about discovering his personal legend: what he always wanted to accomplish in his life. And that "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." This is the core philosophy and motto of the book. During his travels, he meets a beautiful Arabian woman named Fatima who explains to him that if he follows his heart, he shall find what it is he seeks. Santiago then encounters a lone alchemist who tells about personal legends. He says that people only want to find the treasure of their personal legends but not the personal legend itself. He feels unsure about himself as he listens to the alchemist's teachings. The alchemist states "Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings."

The Lovely Bones

On December 6, 1973, in a suburb of Philadelphia, Susie Salmon takes her usual shortcut home from her school through a cornfield. George Harvey, a 36-year-old neighbor who lives alone and builds dollhouses for a living, persuades her to have a look at an underground den he has recently dug in the field. Once she has entered it, he rapes and murders her with a knife and dismembers her body, putting her remains in a safe and dumps it in a sinkhole. Susie's spirit flees toward her personal heaven.

The Salmon family refuses to accept that Susie is dead, until Susie's elbow is found by the neighbor's dog. The police talk to Harvey, finding him odd but seeing no reason to suspect him. Susie's father Jack, on extended leave from work, begins to suspect Harvey, a sentiment his surviving daughter Lindsey comes to share.

One day Len Fenerman, the detective assigned to the case, tells the Salmons that the police have exhausted all leads and are dropping the investigation. That night in his study, Jack looks out the window and sees a flashlight in the cornfield. Believing it is Harvey returning to destroy evidence, he runs out to confront him, armed with a baseball bat. The figure is not actually Harvey, but Clarissa, Susie's best friend who is dating Brian, one of Susie's classmates. As Susie watches in horror from heaven, Brian - who was going to meet Clarissa in the cornfield - beats Jack with the bat, after finding him and the panicking Clarissa and breaks Jacks knee. While Jack recovers from a knee replacement surgery, Susie's mother, Abigail, begins an affair with the widowed Detective Fenerman.

Trying to help her father prove his suspicions, Lindsey sneaks into Harvey's house and finds a diagram of the underground den, but is forced to leave when Harvey returns unexpectedly. The police, however, satisfied with Harvey's explanation, do not arrest him, which allows him to flee Norristown. Later, evidence is discovered linking Harvey to Susie's murder, as well as to those of several other young girls. Susie meets his other victims in heaven, sees into Harvey's traumatic childhood, and realizes that he has made several unsuccessful attempts to stop killing.

Abigail leaves Jack, eventually taking a job at a winery in California. Her mother, Grandma Lynn, moves into the Salmons' home to care for Buckley and Lindsey. Eight years later, Lindsey and her boyfriend, Samuel Heckler, become engaged after finishing college, find an old house in the woods owned by a classmate's father, and decide to fix it up and live there. Sometime after the celebration, while arguing with his son Buckley, Jack suffers a heart attack. The emergency prompts Abigail to return from California, but the reunion is tempered by Buckley's lingering bitterness for her abandoning the family for most of his childhood.

Meanwhile, Harvey returns to Norristown, which has become more developed. He explores his old neighborhood and notices the school is being expanded into the cornfield where he murdered Susie. He drives by the sinkhole where Susie's body rests and where Ruth Connors and Ray Singh are standing. Ruth, Susie's former classmate who had felt Susie's spirit rush past her immediately after she was murdered, senses the women Harvey has killed and is physically overcome. Susie, watching from heaven, is also overwhelmed with emotion and feels how she and Ruth transcend their present existence, and the two girls exchange positions: Susie, her spirit now in Ruth's body, connects with Ray, who had a crush on Susie in school, and had made plans to go out with her a few days before the murder. Ray senses Susie's presence, and is stunned by the fact that Susie is briefly back with him. In the bike shop of Sam Heckler's older brother Hal they find a room to make love, as Susie has longed to do after witnessing her sister and Samuel. Afterwards, Susie must return to heaven.

Susie moves on into another, larger part of heaven, occasionally watching earthbound events. Her sister gives birth to a daughter, Abigail Suzanne. When stalking another young girl in New Hampshire, Harvey is hit by a huge icicle and falls down a snow-covered slope, dying from the wound. At the end of the novel, Susie's charm bracelet is found by a Norristown couple who know nothing of its significance, and Susie closes the story by wishing the reader "a long and happy life.

The Last Song

Veronica “Ronnie” Miller’s life was turned upside down when her parents divorced and her father moved to Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains alienated from her parents, particularly her father, until her mother decides it would be everyone’s best interest if she and her brother spent the summer with him. Resentful and rebellious, Ronnie rejects her father’s attempts to reach out to her and threatens to return to New York before the summer’s end. But soon Ronnie meets Will, the last person she thought she’d ever be attracted to, and finds herself falling for him, opening herself up to the greatest happiness – and pain – that she has ever known. Ronnie finds out that her father has stomach cancer. She and her brother, Jonah, finish the window that they started with their father for the church. Her brother, Jonah, goes back to New York with their mother, but Ronnie stays back with her father until his death. She completes the song on the piano that he began to write and plays it for her audition at Juilliard. She and Will part after the funeral and she believes that they will never meet properly again, she thought it was over, but after Christmas, he transfers and goes to college in New York so he can spend more time with Ronnie.

The Notebook

The story begins with Noah, an 80-year-old man, reading to a woman in a nursing home. He tells her the following story:
Noah, 31, returns from World War II to his town of New Bern, North Carolina. He finishes restoring an antebellum style house after his father's death. Meanwhile Allie, 29, sees the house in the newspaper and decides to pay him a visit.
They are meeting after a 14-year separation, which followed their brief but passionate summer romance when her family was visiting the town. They were separated by class, as she was the daughter of a wealthy family and he worked in a lumberyard then. Seeing each other brings on a flood of memories and strong emotions in both of them. They have dinner together and talk about their lives and the past. Allie learns that Noah had written to her frequently after their breakup. She realizes that her mother must have intercepted his letters. They talk about what could have happened between them without her mother's interference. At the end of the night, Noah invites Allie to come back the next day and promises her a surprise. She decides to see him again. During this time, her fiancé Lon tries to reach her at the hotel. When Allie does not respond to his calls, he begins to worry.
The next day, Noah takes Allie on a canoe ride in a small lake where swans and geese swim. She is enchanted. On their way back, they are caught in a storm and end up soaked. When they return to his house, they talk again about how important they were to each other, and how their feelings have not changed. Noah and Allie share a kiss and make love.
Allie's mother shows up the next morning and gives Allie the letters from Noah. When her mother leaves, Allie is torn and has a decision to make. She knows she loves Noah, but she doesn't want to hurt Lon. Noah begs her to stay with him, but she decides to leave. She cries all the way back to the hotel and starts reading the letters her mother returned to her. At the hotel, Lon is waiting in the lobby.
Noah stops reading the story at this point, and tells the reader that he is reading to his wife, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and does not recognize him. He explains that he is also ill, battling a third cancer, and suffering heart disease, kidney failure, and severe arthritis in his hands.
He resumes reading the story and describing their life together: her career as a famous painter, their children, growing old together, and finally the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. He had changed the names in the story to protect her, but he is Noah and she is Allie. They walk together and Allie, although she does not recognize him, says she might feel something for him.
That night they have dinner together. Referring to the story, she says that she thinks Allie chose Noah. Recognizing her husband, she tells him that she loves him. They embrace and talk, but after almost four hours, Allie fades and begins to panic and hallucinate. She forgets him again.
A few days later, Noah has a stroke and is hospitalized. He is released and, on the night of their 49th anniversary, he reads the letter Allie wrote to him when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Deciding to visit her, he finds that Allie recognizes him, and they talk.

a walk to remember

the story starts with a prologue from Landon Carter at age 57.The remainder of the story takes place when Landon is a 17-year-old high school senior.Landon lives in the small, religious town of Beaufort, North Carolina. His father is a genial, charismatic congressman.

His father is not around very much, as he lives in Washington, D.C.Landon is more reclusive, which causes some tension in their relationship. Landon's father pressures him into running for class president.His best friend, Eric Hunter, who is the most popular boy in school, helps him and, to his surprise, Landon wins the election.As student body president, Landon is required to attend the school dance with a date.He asks many girls, but none are available. That night, he looks through his yearbook, trying to find an acceptable date.Since nobody else seems to be available, Landon reluctantly asks Jamie Sullivan, the daughter of Hegbert Sullivan, the Beaufort church minister, who accepts his invitation.While Jamie is very religious and carries a Bible with her wherever she goes, Landon (one of the popular students) is reluctant to go to the dance with someone like her. When Landon is threatened by Lew, Jamie comes to Landon's aid, to his appreciation. At the end of the night, he admits she was the best date possible

A few days later, Jamie asks Landon to participate in the school's production of The Christmas AngelWhile Landon is not very enthusiastic about participating, he agrees to it anyway. Jamie, on the other hand, could not be happier about her new cast mate. Landon knows that if his friends learn about his role in the play, he will be teased relentlessly.One day at rehearsal, Jamie asks if Landon will walk her home, after which it becomes routine. A couple of days later, Eric mocks the couple during their walk home and Landon becomes truly embarrassed to be with Jamie. Meanwhile, Landon continues to learn about all the people and organizations Jamie spends her time helping, including an orphanage. Landon and Jamie visit the orphanage one day to discuss a possible showing of The Christmas Angel,but their proposal is quickly rejected by Mr. Jenkins.On the drive to the orphanage, Jamie tells Landon that all she wants in the future is to get married in a church full of people and to have her father walk her down the aisle.While Landon thinks this is a strange wish, he accepts it. In truth, he is beginning to enjoy his time with her.

One day, while they are walking home, Landon yells at Jamie and he tells her that he is not friends with her. The next day at the first show of The Christmas Angel, Jamie enters the stage dressed as the angel, making Landon simply utter his line, "You're beautiful,"meaning it for the first time. Following that, Jamie asks Landon if he would go around town and retrieve the jars containing money collected for the orphans' Christmas presents. When Landon collects the jars, there is only $55.73, but when he gives the money to Jamie, there is $247.Jamie buys gifts for the orphanage, and Landon and Jamie spend Christmas Eve there.Jamie's Christmas gift to Landon is her deceased mother's Bible.As they get in the car to go home, Landon realizes his true feelings for her. "All I could do is wonder how I'd ever fallen in love with a girl like Jamie Sullivan."He invites her to his house for Christmas dinner. The next day Landon visits Jamie at her house, where they share their first kiss on her porch. Afterward, Landon asks Hegbert if they can go to Flavin's, a local restaurant, on New Year's Eve. While Hegbert initially refuses, after Landon declares his love for Jamie, Hegbert allows it.

On New Year's Jamie and Landon go to dinner, where they share their first dance. A couple of weeks later, Landon tells Jamie that he is in love with her. To his surprise, Jamie replies by insisting that he can't be. In response, Landon demands an explanation,and Jamie reveals that she is dying of leukemia.

The following Sunday, Hegbert announces to his congregation that his daughter is dying. Jamie does not return to school the following Monday and that it is eventually learned that she is too ill and will never return to school. While they are having dinner at Landon's house, Jamie tells Landon, "I love you, too," for the first time. A couple weeks later, Eric and Margaret visit Jamie's house, where they apologize for ever being rude to her.Eric gives Jamie the $400 that he collected for the orphanage.Jamie refuses to stay at the hospital, because she wants to die at home. In turn, Landon's father helps to provide Jamie the best equipment and doctors so she can spend the rest of her life at home.This gesture helps to mend the gap between father and son. One day, while sitting next to Jamie while she sleeps, Landon comes up with an idea.He runs to the church to find Hegbert and asks him for permission to marry Jamie. While Hegbert is reluctant, his refusal to deny Landon's request is seen by Landon as approval.Landon runs back to Jamie's side and asks, "Will you marry me?"

Landon and Jamie are married in a church full of people with Hegbert walking Jamie down the aisle. When they reach the front of the church, Hegbert says, "I can no more give Jamie away than I can give away my heart. But what I can do is let another share in the joy that she has always given me.Hegbert has had to experience so much pain in his life, first losing his wife, now knowing his only child will soon be gone, too. The book ends with Landon 40 years later at age 57. He still loves Jamie and wears her ring.He finishes the story by saying, "I now believe, by the way, that miracles can happen."

Veronica Decides To Die

Veronika is a young, beautiful woman from Ljubljana, Slovenia who appears to have the perfect life, but nevertheless decides to commit suicide by ingesting too many sleeping pills. While she waits to die, she decides to read a magazine.

After seeing an article in the magazine which wittily asks "Where is Slovenia?," she decides to write a letter to the press justifying her suicide, the idea being to make the press believe that she has killed herself because people don't even know where Slovenia is. Her plan fails and she wakes up in Villete, a mental hospital in Slovenia, where she is told she has a week to live.

Her presence there affects all of the mental hospital's patients, especially Zedka, who hasclinical depression; Mari, who suffers from panic attacks; and Eduard, who hasschizophrenia, and with whom Veronika falls in love. During her internment in Villete she realises that she has nothing to lose and can therefore do what she wants, say what she wants and be who she wants without having to worry about what others think of her; as a mental patient, she is unlikely to be criticized. Because of this newfound freedom Veronika experiences all the things she never allowed herself to experience, including hatred, love and sexual awakening.

In the meantime, Villete's head psychiatrist, Dr. Igor, attempts a fascinating but provocative experiment. Can you "shock" someone into wanting to live by convincing her that death is imminent? Like a doctor applying defibrillator paddles to a heart attack victim, Dr. Igor's "prognosis" jump-starts Veronika's new appreciation of the world around her.

the hunger games

The Hunger Games takes place in an unidentified future time period after the destruction of North America, in a nation known as Panem. Panem consists of a wealthy Capitol and twelve surrounding, poorer districts. District 12, where the book begins, is located in the coal-rich region that was formerly Appalachia.

As punishment for a previous rebellion against the Capitol, every year one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each district are selected at random and forced to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised event in which the participants, or "tributes", must fight to the death in a dangerous outdoor arena until only one remains. The story follows fatherless 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12 who volunteers for the 74th Games in place of her younger sister, Primrose. Also participating from District 12 is Peeta Meellark, a boy whom Katniss knows from school and who once gave her bread when her family was starving.

Katniss and Peeta are taken to the Capitol, where they meet the other tributes and are publicly displayed to the Capitol audience. During this time, Peeta reveals on-air his long-time unrequited love for Katniss. Katniss believes this to be a ploy to gain audience support for the Games, which can be crucial for survival, as audience members are permitted to send gifts like food and medicine to favored tributes during the Games. The Games begin with eleven of the 24 tributes dying in the first day, while Katniss relies on her well-practiced hunting and outdoor skills to survive. As the games continue, the tribute death toll increases, but both Katniss and Peeta are able to survive.

Supposedly due to Katniss and Peeta's beloved image in the minds of the audience as "star-crossed lovers", a rule change is announced midway through the games, stating that two tributes from the same district can win the Hunger Games as a pair. Upon hearing this, Katniss searches for Peeta and finds him wounded. She nurses him back to health and acts the part of a young girl falling in love to gain more favor with the audience and, consequently, gifts from her sponsors. When the couple are finally the last two tributes, the Gamemakers suddenly reverse the rule change and try to force them into a dramatic finale where one must kill the other to win. Instead, they both threaten suicide by means of poisonous berries in hope that the Gamemakers would rather have two winners than none. It works, and both Katniss and Peeta are declared winners of the 74th Hunger Games.

Though she survives the ordeal in the arena and is treated to a hero's welcome in the Capitol, Katniss is warned that she has now become a political target after having defied her society's authoritarian leaders so publicly. Afterwards, Peeta is heartbroken to learn that their relationship was at least partially a calculated ploy to garner sympathy from the audience, although Katniss remains unsure of her own feelings.

a love for a sister

"Anna Fitzgerald was definitely not a mistake. She was especially designed from her parents genes to provide a match for her elder sister Kate's rare blood type. Kate has Leukemia, and when Anna was young she donated bone marrow to help with the treatment. Soon however, it was more marrow, blood, stem cells and now, when she is thirteen her parents want her kidney.

The book jumps straight into the story where Anna begins to fight against her parents control, and adamantly against giving Kate her kidney she convinces a lawyer to take her case against her parents - she is suing them for the rights to her own body.

The plot follows Anna's family's struggle, not only within the legal system but the emotional trials they all must now face; her parents struggle to understand Anna's motives, as Anna seems also to do at times. At thirteen years old Anna rebels against her parents in one of the most heart wrenching ways possible for both parties, and in particular her alienation of her mother causes all sorts of difficulties within the family. A well-rounded story, more emphasis is placed on the family side of Anna's battle with the underlying influence of Jesse, the girls' older brother who has been slightly neglected, and perhaps due to the strain of having two frequently hospitalised sisters has become delinquient and isolated.

Interestingly, Kate does not seem to voice much opinion about Anna's choice to deny her sister a life-saving organ, which adds to the intrigue of the legal battle. Anna's relationship with her lawyer is at times one-sided, as she begins to increasingly rely upon him, and he gets frustrated as he begins to feel like a babysitter. He does however recognize the influence of her controlling mother, and puts her under the care of a legal guardian, which naturally strains family relationships further.

Anna's case finally reaches the court, but her battle is far from over. More emotional manipulation and typical insecurities follow, as she stands up for herself in a world of adults. " 

my sister's keeper

Thirteen year old Anna Fitzgerald knows why she was born in vitro with a near perfect genetic match so that her body can serve as spare parts to keep her older sister Kate alive ever since her sibling was diagnosed with leukemia. As Kate suffered numerous relapses, Anna's platelets, bone marrow, and umbilical cord stem cells have been used to keep the older sister alive. 

Their parents Sara and Brian demand that Anna donate a kidney to Kate. As her older brother Jesse turns to arson over his frustrations with his family's motto of Kate only, Anna has grown tired of being a harvest. She hires attorney Campbell Alexander to represent her in court in an attempt to get a judgment stopping her parents from using her body anymore. Sara, who is obsessed with keeping her beloved Kate alive at all costs, feels betrayed by her youngest child while her husband understands the immense pressure on his youngest daughter. Anna wants to help Kate because she loves her sister, but knows that it must be her decision not a mom who sees her as a biological feeder mechanism. 

MY SISTER'S KEEPER is a reflective deep look at a family in crisis due to a long term health problem of one of the members. The story line is at its best when Jodi Picoult inspires readers to ponder intense philosophical questions on right and wrong that would turn Ayn Rand's head spinning in moral dilemmas. Though the melodramatic ending is too neat a wrap-up even with a twist, readers who appreciate a novel that provides a profundity that few tales possess will want to peruse this thought provoking drama.