104 books recommended by U of T Scarborough students

books on library shelves

Sara Norton

On Sunday, May 17 we took to social media to ask UTSC students to share their favourite books they recommend to others. We received an outpouring of submissions, 104 of which we've summarized and organized into six categories: Science Fiction and Fantasy, Family and Friendships, Non-Fiction, Mystery Thrillers, Love and Relationships, and Historical Fiction.

Science Fiction AND Fantasy

  1. American Gods, Neil Gaiman (2001). Shadow Moon is released from prison the day after his wife and best friend are killed together in a car accident. Soonafter he finds himself sitting on a plane next to a man who seems to know a lot about him. Wednesday has a job for him.

  2. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (1962). High-school student Meg Murry, is transported on an adventure through time and space with her younger brother Charles Wallace and her friend Calvin O'Keefe to rescue her father, a gifted scientist, from the evil forces that hold him prisoner on another planet.

  3. Anthem, Ayn Rand (1938). Equality 7-2521 lives in a frightening future in which individuals have no name, no independence, and no values. Despite such a restrictive environment, he dares to stand apart from the herd, to think and choose for himself, to discover electricity, and to love the woman of his choice. 

  4. Death’s Master, Tanith Lee (1979). Lesbian queen Narasen is forced by a curse to become pregnant in order to save her city. But this quest is more difficult than it seems. And once her baby is born and grown, he sets out on a quest to drink the waters of immortality in order to destroy Death.

  5. Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985). In future New England, the totalitarian state Gilead has overthrown the United States government. The story follows the lives of the powerless women in a patriarchal society and the various means by which these women resist and attempt to gain individuality and independence.

  6. Red Queen, Victoria Aveyard (2015). The poverty stricken "Reds" are commoners living under the rule of the Silvers, elite warriors with god-like powers. To Mare Barrow, a 17-year-old Red girl, it looks like nothing will ever change, so she takes on the role of a long-lost princess in order to save her family.

  7. Red Rising, Pierce Brown (2014). Darrow works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations, that his work will result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed.

  8. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami (1985). This society is split between "Calcutecs" who work for the governmental system, and the criminal "Semiotecs" who work for "The Factory. The System protects data while the Semiotecs steal it, but perhaps one man might be behind both.

  9. Throne of Glass, Sarah J Maas (2012). An imprisoned assassin is offered a shot at freedom if she can win a competition to become the king's royal assassin.

  10. The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (2010). Szeth, a Shin man cast out by his people and condemned to obey his constantly changing masters, is sent to assassinate the king of one of the world's most powerful nations, Alethkar.

  11. Farenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1953). In a dystopian society that burns books in order to control dangerous ideas, Guy Montag is a fireman who questions the book-burning policy and undergoes extraordinary suffering and transformation as a result.

  12. Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood (2003)Snowman wakes up in a post-apocalyptic world. The story shifts back and forth between Snowman’s present experiences and his memories of his pre-apocalypse life. Present day, Snowman watches over the Children of Crake, or the “Crakers." In the past, he ran with friends Crake and Oryx, and all three may have had something to do with the outbreak that killed most people on the planet.

  13. Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin (2014). Ye Wenjie hijacks a government program meant to make contact with aliens and attempts to encourage extraterrestrials to invade Earth. 

  14. Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1943). A little prince meets a pilot stranded in the desert. The prince tells the pilot that he was born on an asteroid and he recounts many strange encounters from his travels.

  15. Sphere, Michael Crichton (1987). Sphere tells the story of a group of scientists, led by psychologist Norman Johnson, as they explore the ruins of a spacecraft discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  16. The Heroes of Olympus (Series), Rick Riordan (2010-2014). The Heroes of Olympus is a pentalogy of novels detailing a conflict between Greek demigods, Roman demigods, and Gaea, also known as Mother Earth.

  17. Life of Pi, Yann Martel (2001). The story of a young man who survives a harrowing shipwreck and months in a lifeboat with a large Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.

  18. The Mortal Coil, Emily Suvada (2017). When a super-soldier from Cartaxas shows up at Cat's doorstep to drag her to their evil lair, Cat realizes that the world as she knows it isn't her world at all, but a world of lies.

  19. Shadow Queen, C.J. Redwine (2016). Lorelai is a crown princess and fugitive at large with one mission: kill the wicked queen who took both the Ravenspire throne and the life of her father.

  20. Thorn of Glass, Sarah J Maas (2012). An imprisoned assassin is offered freedom if she can win a competition to become the king's royal assassin.

  21. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho (1988). A shepherd boy named Santiago has a recurring dream to be prophetic, and seeks its meaning. A gypsy fortune teller interprets the dream as a prophecy telling the boy that he will discover a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids.

  22. Maze Runner, James Dashner (2009). Thomas arrives in a glade at the center of a giant labyrinth with no memory of his life, surrounded by youth in similar circumstance. The group quickly promotes him to "Runner status," those who patrol the maze to find an escape route. Together with Teresa, the only female, Thomas tries to convince his cohorts that he knows a way out.

  23. This Other Eden, Ben Elton (2003). Earth has been devastated by mankind, and it is assumed the environment is about to collapse. Rather than adopt a more eco-friendly approach to life, most people have instead invested in a "claustrosphere," a dome-shaped habitat in which all water, food and air is endlessly recycled in a completely closed environment.

  24. The Stormlight Archive (Series), Brandon Sanderson (2010-present). Shardblades and Shardplate are mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. As brutal wars rage over the control of these magical weapons, an ancient text called The Way of Kings tells of ancient times, the Knights Radiant, and perhaps the true cause of the war.

  25. Harry Potter (Series), J. K. Rowling (1997-2007). Harry Potter  is the orphaned son of two powerful wizards and possesses unique magical powers of his own. He is summoned from his life as an unwanted child to become a student at Hogwarts, a school for wizards. There, he meets several friends who become his closest allies and help him discover the truth about his parents' mysterious deaths.

  26. Eragon (Series), Christopher Paolini (2002-2011). Eragon is a fifteen-year-old boy who has lived with his uncle Garrow and cousin Roran on a farm near the village of Carvahall, ever since his mother Selena, Garrow's sister, left him there right after his birth. While hunting in the Spine, Eragon is surprised to see the blue dragon egg, which he believes to be a stone, appear in front of him. A few months later, Eragon witnesses a baby dragon hatch from the egg.

Family & Friendships

  1. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2007). A novel about two boys growing up in Afghanistan and how their friendship shapes the rest of their lives. Main character Amir is a Sunni Muslim who struggles to find his place in the world because of the aftereffects and fallout from a series of traumatic childhood events.

  2. Dear Evan Hansen, Val Emmich, Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek (2018). When a letter that was never meant to be seen by anyone draws high school senior Evan Hansen into a family's grief over the loss of their son, he is given the chance of a lifetime: to belong. He just has to stick to a lie he never meant to tell, that the notoriously troubled Connor Murphy was his secret best friend.

  3. The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1880). The Brothers Karamazov is a family tragedy centered around a father and his sons. Fyodor, the eldest Karamazov, has three sons: Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha. Ivan and Alyosha have the same mother, but Dmitri, the oldest, has a different mother. Fyodor is a greedy landowner, a bawdy lecher, and a neglectful father.

  4. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813). In rural England in the early 19th century, the Bennet family has five very different daughters. Mrs. Bennet is anxious to see all her daughters married, especially as the modest family estate is to be inherited by another man when Mr. Bennet dies.

  5. Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908). Anne is a young orphan girl who is mistakenly delivered to an older couple looking to adopt a boy to work on their farm in Avonlea on Prince Edward Island.

  6. Bread Givers, Anzia Yezierska (1925). In 1920's New York City, Sara is a 10-year old Jewish-American girl living in a destitute tenement with her Orthodox Jewish father, her mother, and her three older sisters.

  7. Five People You Meet in Heaven, Mitch Albom (2003). Eddie is killed and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who had a significant impact upon him while he was alive.

  8. A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman (2012). Ove is a grumpy man who seems to judge everyone he meets. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. But behind the cranky exterior there is a deeper story and a sadness.

  9. The Seven Sisters (Series), Lucinda Riley (2015). Maia is a young woman who embarks on a journey to discover her parentage and ancestry after recently suffering the loss of her beloved, adoptive father.

  10. Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo (2019). Alex is an unlikely Yale student raised on the outskirts of Los Angeles by a hippie mom. She decides drops out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and worse.

  11. Educated, Tara Westover (2018). The memoir of a young girl who escapes from violence and an emotional prison. It is a conflicting story of fierce family loyalty as well as that of the intense sorrow that arises from the division of one's closest ties

  12. The Outsiders, S. E Hinton (1967). Ponyboy Curtis is a twelve year old boy in a trouble neighbourhood. As the member of a violent gang, he struggles with knowing right and wrong in a society that declares him an outsider.

  13. Flowers in the Attic, V.C Andrews (1979). The Dollanganger family lived a picturesque life until Mr. Dollanganger dies in a car accident. His wife Corinne is left deep in debt with their four children and no professional skills. They're family is forced to move in with Corinne's parents, with whom she has a complicated relationship.

  14. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Benjamin Alire Sáenz (2012). Ari and Dante are teenage friends who spent their summer full of intellectual interactions and questioning everything from life to the universe.

  15. Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1963). Esther is a college student who dreams of becoming a poet. She is selected for a month-long summer internship as a guest editor of Ladies' Day magazine, but her time in New York City is unfulfilling as she struggles with issues of identity and societal norms.

  16. Scarborough, Catherine Hernandez (2017). Follow the lives of three children living in Toronto’s low-income east end: Bing, who lives under the shadow of his father’s mental illness while his mother works tirelessly in a nail salon; Sylvie, who, along with her family, rides the waves of the shelter system and the complications of special needs education; and Laura, whose history of neglect with her mother is destined to repeat itself with her father. 

  17. A Thousand Splendid Sons, Khaled Hosseini (2007). A gripping tale of two young women, Mariam and Laila, and their difficult lives together, married to the same husband, Rasheed. The women form a close bond during these miserable circumstances, and come to care for each other deeply.

  18. Smile, Drama, Ghosts, Sisters, Guts, (Series) Raina Telgemeier (2010-2019). Raina Telgemeier is the author and illustrator of the humorous graphic novels Smile, Drama, Sisters, and Ghosts. Each book is the story of a young woman dealing with a common issue: in Smile, it’s braces; in Guts, it’s stomach pains; in Sisters, it’s a new baby in the family; in Drama, it’s pursuing an interest in theatre; Ghosts is about fear of ghosts.  

  19. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Katherine Boo (2012). Follow the interconnected lives of several people living in a slum in Mumbai, India, including a young trash picker, a female "slumlord," and a college student.

  20. A Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls (2005). A little girl's escape from abuse, neglect, and poverty, travelling from Nevada and Arizona to West Virginia and eventually to New York, follow the tragedies and eventual triumph of the determined Jeannette and her siblings.

  21. A Salty Piece of Land, Jimmy Buffett (2004). Tully Mars is a Wyoming native who flees his home state after throwing a massage table through a woman's window, after suffering a break up.

  1. My Friend Leonard, James Frey (2005). The follow-up story to the novel A Million Little Pieces, this is the story of a close friendship between a newly-sober James and the charismatic, high-living mobster he met in rehab, Leonard.

  2. Turtles all the Way Down, John Green (2017). 16-year-old Aza Holmes is an American high school student with OCD and anxiety. She is grieving the loss of her father while a budding relationship grows between her and a neighbor, all the while she's search for a fugitive billionaire. 

Non-Fiction 

  1. Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City, Tanya Talaga (2017). Journalist Tanya Talaga tells the story of seven Indigenous high school students who lost their lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

  2. The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank (1952). A book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

  3. Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom (1997). Tuesdays with Morrie is a memoir by American author Mitch Albom about a series of visits Albom made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS.

  4. Shanataram, Gregory David Roberts (2003). A convicted Australian bank robber and heroin addict escapes from Pentridge Prison and flees to India.

  5. Talking to Strangers, Malcom Gladwell (2019). A look at the ways we do harm by failing to understand one another, a problem Gloadwell investigates through the child-abuse scandal involving Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the deceptions of financier Bernie Madoff and the TV sitcom “Friends.”

  6. The Fifth Risk, MIchael Lewis (2018). An examination of the transition and political appointments of the Donald Trump presidency, especially with respect to three government agencies: the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Commerce.

  7. Becoming, Michelle Obama (2018). This memoir covers her journey from her roots in Chicago, how she found her voice in her education, her career, becoming a mother, and her bittersweet time in the White House.

  8. Brief Answers to Big Questions, Stephen Hawking (2018). The physicist's posthumous book highlights his belief in the rationality of nature and in our ability to uncover its secrets — and a faith in science's ability to solve humanity's biggest problems.

  9. Sapiens and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Harari (2016). Yuval Noah Harari turns to the past to predict the future. Drawing upon 70,000 years of human history, Harari's predictions are dark, dystopian and disturbing.

  10. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Steven Pinker (2002). Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social sciences, arguing that human behavior is substantially shaped by evolutionary psychological adaptations.

  11. Shapeshifters: A Journey Through the Changing Human Body, Gavin Francis (2018). Physician and writer Gavin Francis considers the inevitable changes all of our bodies undergo--such as birth, puberty, and death, and those that only some of our bodies will: like getting a tattoo, experiencing psychosis, suffering anorexia, being pregnant, or undergoing a gender transition.

  12. Shapeshifters: A Doctor’s Note on Medicine & Human Change, Gavin Francis (2018). Physician and writer Gavin Francis explores key life transitions: conception, birth, puberty, pregnancy, menopause, and death.

  13. The 5am Club, Robin Sharma (2018). Leadership and performance expert Robin Sharma introduced The 5am Club concept over twenty years ago, based on a revolutionary morning routine that has helped his clients maximize their productivity, activate their best health and bulletproof their serenity.

  14. Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives, Michael Newton (2002). Learn the latest details and most recent groundbreaking discoveries that reveal, for the first time, the mystery of life in the spirit world after death on Earth―proof that our consciousness survives.

  15. Atomic Habits, James Clear (2018). The definitive guide to break bad behaviors and adopt good ones in four steps, showing you how small, incremental, everyday routines compound and add up to massive, positive change over time.

  16. Leonardo DaVinci, Walter Isaacson (2017). A look at DaVinci's life based on thousands of pages of his notebooks and new discoveries about his work. Isaacson unites Da Vinci’s art with his science and believes his genius was based on practical skills that all of us can improve, including intense curiosity, cautious observation, and imagination.

  17. Give and Take, Adam Grant (2013). Adam Grant believes that success, development, and financial well-being is usually divided into three factors – motivation, ability, and opportunity. But, he goes a step further and identifies a fourth component – the ability to interact with people, to be givers or takers.

  18. More Than Enough, Elaine Weltroth (2019). In her memoir, the revolutionary editor who infused social consciousness into the pages of Teen Vogue explores what it means to come into your own, on your own terms.

  19. Acid for the Children, Flea (2019). In his memoir Flea (of The Red Hot Chili Peppers) shares, in great detail, the first 20 years or so of his life, from his childhood all the way up to the inception of the band that would forever change his world.

  20. Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart, James R Doty (2016). A memoir that tells how the author's personal and professional life changed after he learned the simple techniques of meditation. As a teen, Doty lived a troubled life, but found some escape in having magic as a hobby.

  21. Walden, Henry David Thoreau (1854). A personal account of the two years that Thoreau spent living primitively in a self-constructed cabin deep in the woods outside of his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts.

  22. Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris (2018). A tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov—an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity.

Mystery & Thrillers

  1. And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (1939). Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. With their hosts mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise the murderer may be among them.

  2. The End of Mr. Y, Scarlet Thomas (2006). Ariel Manto is a PhD student who has been researching the 19th century writer Thomas Lumas. She finds an extremely rare copy of Lumas' novel The End of Mr. Y in a second-hand bookshop. The book is rumoured to be cursed - everyone who has read it has died not long afterwards.

  3. Doctor Sleep, Stephen King (2013). A former alcoholic settles in a New Hampshire town and works in a hospice, where his remnant psychic abilities provide comfort to the dying. With the aid of a cat that can sense when a person is about to die, Dan becomes known as "Doctor Sleep." 

  4. IT, Stephen King (1986). The story follows the experiences of seven children as they are terrorized by an evil entity that uses a disguise and hides in everyday locations, midday, awaiting its prey.

  5. The Silent Patient, Alex Michaelides (2019). Centered on a woman's shocking act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.

  6. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866). Rodion Raskolnikov is an impoverished ex-student in Saint Petersburg who formulates a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for money.

  7. The Sinner, Petra Hammesfahr (1999). On a sunny summer afternoon by the lake, Cora Bender stabs a man to death. No one can figure out why, not even her.

  1. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown (2000). When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati

  2. Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn (2006). Journalist Camille Preaker returns to her hometown, Wind Gap, Missouri, to cover the death of two girls.

  3. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1818). Scientist Victor Frankenstein succeeds in giving life to a being of his own creation. However, this is not the perfect specimen he imagines that it will be, but rather a hideous creature who is rejected by Victor and mankind in general.

  4. Inferno, Dan Brown (2013). Harvard professor Robert Langdon is recruited by the World Health Organization to help locate a deadly pathogen. The virus is believed to have been created by a man who thought that the world was in danger of collapse because of overpopulation.

  5. Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel García Márquez (1981). Soon after his wedding day, Santiago Nasar is brutally murdered outside his own front door. 27 years later, an old friend of Santiago’s and a distant relative of the family has returned to the town to make sense of it all.

  6. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owen (2018). The story follows two timelines that slowly intertwine. The first timeline describes the life and adventures of a young girl named Kya as she grows up isolated in the marsh of North Carolina from 1952–1969. The second timeline follows a murder investigation of Chase Andrews, a local celebrity of Barkley Cove, a fictional coastal town of North Carolina.

  7. The Heavens May Fall, Allen Eskens (2016). Detective Max Rupert is convinced that Jennavieve Pruitt was killed by her husband, Ben. Max's friend, attorney Boady Sanden, is equally convinced that Ben, his client, is innocent. The case is pushing their friendship to the breaking point and forcing each to confront their own personal demons.

  8. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Lewis Stevenson (1886). When Dr. Henry Jekyll creates a potion to separate his good and evil selves, he transforms into the purely evil Edward Hyde. At first Jekyll enjoys the freedom Hyde offers, but after Hyde commits murder, Jekyll gradually loses control.

  9. The Stranger, Albert Camus (1942). When his mother dies, Meursault does not show any outward signs of emotion. This removed nature continues throughout his life and relationships. When he kills someone in an altercation, he’s once again forced to confront his lack of emotion and empathy through the trial. 

Love & Relationships

  1. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1878). Anna has an affair with officer Count Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky that scandalizes the social circles of Saint Petersburg and forces the young lovers to flee to Italy in a search for happiness. Returning to Russia, their lives further unravel.

  2. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1847) Wuthering Heights is a multigenerational story of love and revenge that revolves around the inhabitants of a desolate farmhouse called Wuthering Heights and its owner Heathcliff.

  3. The Selection, Kiera Cass (2012). For 35 girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in the palace and compete for the heart of the gorgeous Prince Maxon.

  4. Love in the time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1985). Florentino Ariza, who was rejected by his love, Fermina Daza, in his youth. He maintains a quietly loyal for  fifty-one years, nine months, and four days, until he meets Fermina again at her husband’s wake and renews his suit.

  5. It Ends with Us, Colleen Hoover (2016). Lily Bloom traces her past history growing up in an abusive home, her fall into an abusive relationship, and her escape from that doomed relationship.

  6. Normal People, Sally Rooney (2018). Classmates Marianne and Connell move in and out of each other’s lives through school and university. Connell is popular, sporty and handsome, with an easy manner that disguises his shyness. Marianne is prickly but brilliant, disarmingly frank with teachers and peers but also when telling a boy she likes him. 

  7. The Temptation of Gracie, Santa Montefiore (2018). Set in Tuscany, follow the life of Gracie Burton, as she revisits the past, repairs strained relationships, forges new friendships, and searches for love long lost. 

  8. Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Thomas Hardy (1891). Tess Durbeyfield is a young woman who discovers that her family has noble blood and is sent to work for the matriarch of her line in a large house in another village. While working in the house, Tess meets the old noblewoman's son, Alec d'Urberville and he become taken with her.

  9. The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1890). Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic world view: that beauty and sensual fulfilment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Historical Fiction

  1. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960) Six-year-old Scout Finch lives with her lawyer father Atticus and her ten-year-old brother Jem. Scout, Jem and their friend Dill try to make their reclusive neighbour Boo Radley leave his house. Many residents of Maycomb are racists and during the novel Atticus is asked to defend Tom Robinson, a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman.

  2. The Alice Network, Kate Quinn (2017). Two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.

  3. Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay (2006). Sarah's Key follows the two plots of Sarah Starzynski, a ten-year-old girl during World War II, as well as the life of Julia Jarmond in the present-day Paris. The stories are connected through the apartment Julia wants to buy, which happened to be the home of the young girl.

  4. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel (2014). A pandemic known as the "Georgia Flu" has devastated the world, killing most of the population. Hear the story of the survivors: a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

  5. 1984, George Orwell (1949). Winston Smith, a low ranking member of 'the Party,' is frustrated by the omnipresent eyes of the party, and its ominous ruler Big Brother, who controls every aspect of people's lives.

  6. Between the Shades of Grey, Ruta Sepetys (2011). One night in 1941 Lithuania, Soviet officers barge into a home, tearing the family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a train car, 15-year old Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. 

  7. Heroes and Mythos, Stephen Fry (2017). Stephen Fry gloriously retells the epic myths of the Greek heroes. Filled with white-knuckle chases and battles, impossible puzzles and riddles, acts of base cowardice and real bravery, murders and selfless sacrifices, Heroes is the story of what we mortals are truly capable of - at our worst and our very best.

  8. Unwind Dystology, Neal Shusterman (2007). After the Second Civil War was fought over abortion, a compromise was reached, allowing parents to sign an order for their children between the ages of 13 and 18 to be "unwound" (dissecting their body parts for later use). The story centers around three teenagers who have been scheduled to be unwound: Connor Lassiter, Risa Ward, and Levi "Lev" Jedediah Calder.