Off the Shelf

Shirley Jackson’s 1962 novel, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, is a gothic fiction and mystery novel which features a twisted family full of outcasts and secrets. The protagonists, Merricat and her older sister Constance live alone with their Uncle Julian, the last living family member they have. The rest of the family was poisoned by arsenic six years ago, and the family has become a livi...

The Witcher The Last Wish, by Andrzej Sapkowski, is an exhilarating fictional novel about a witcher named Geralt of Rivia. In this novel, Geralt goes on numerous adventures. He is contracted to hunt down beasts and monsters. Geralt, being a man-made mutant himself, gets called a monster by humans, but at heart, he is a loving and empathetic being who protects the innocent. This novel shows the conflict...

James Joyce’s Dubliners is an excellent collection of short stories centered around his hometown of Dublin. Dubliners is wonderful in its portrayal of a stagnant and mundane urban life, and unlike many of his other works, like Finnegan’s Wake or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James’ writing style is much more grounded in this collection of short stories, which helps to offer a wind...

In Holly Jackson’s novel, Good Girl, Bad Blood the protagonist, Pip Fitz-Amobi, goes on her second adventure as a high school detective. In this novel, Pip searches for Jamie Reynolds, the brother of Pip’s close friend. Jamie goes missing on the day of Sal and Andie’s memorial. Pip had recently found the killers of Sal and Andie in a prequel to Good Girl, Bad Blood. Pip says that she will not...

Jeannette Walls' 2005 memoir, The Glass Castle – which spent eight years on the New York Times bestseller list – is a truly remarkable story of perseverance, repentance, and a transformative look into a family that is both profoundly dysfunctional and nomadic and yet they all obtain a deep love and loyalty for one another.  The book, to say the least, was so bizarre and unpredictable that t...

Angie Thomas's 2017 young adult novel, The Hate U Give, was  Thomas's debut novel and is a breathtaking ode to the Black Lives Matter crisis. What started as a short story written in college in response to Oscar Grant's police shooting, soon became an incredible tale that topped the New York Times Bestseller list for 50 weeks in a row! The story follows Starr Carter, a 16-year-old Black girl from a...

The instant New York Times bestseller, My Body, by world-renowned supermodel, political voice and writer, Emily Ratajkwoski, is a riveting look at feminism, power, misogyny, and objectification. The series of essays present moments in Ratajkowski’s life while analyzing the culture's fetishization of female beauty and its obsession with and scorn for women's sexuality She also ponders the strange m...

Yaa Gyasi’s, 2016, debut historical fiction novel, Homegoing, is a staggering multi-generational narrative that begins in the 17th century in Ghana and spans all the way to the United States in the 20th century. The story is of two half-sisters, both unaware of each other's existence. One marries a British governor and wealthy slave trader, while the other is enslaved in the basement of their castle...

Taylor Jenkins Reed’s 2019 novel, Daisy Jones & The Six, is a riveting story of the meteoric rise of an iconic 1970s rock band and the uncertainty surrounding their infamous breakup. Loosely based on the narrative of Fleetwood Mac, the tale is conveyed in a documentary style, told through background interviews with the band; moreover, this fictional story captures the essence of creativity in th...