Books

The Scrivener’s Bones Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz heads into the Library of Alexandria to find his missing father, where the librarians will trade you anything for your soul. The Sealed Nectar Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri An award-winning English biography of the Prophet Muhammad. 1 recommender The Second Chance Convenience Store Kim Ho-Yeon Kim Ho-Yeon's bestselling urban fable about a Seoul convenience store owner who hires a homeless man, translated by Janet Hong. The Second Mountain David Brooks A fulfilling life has two mountains: the first about career and status, the second, often reached through a valley of suffering, about something larger. 1 recommender The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir Beauvoir's study of how woman came to be defined as the other, in the unabridged Borde and Malovany-Chevallier translation. 2 recommenders The Secret Julie Garwood A Scottish highlander marries an Englishwoman to settle a debt, which goes as expected. 1 recommender The Secret of the Old Clock Carolyn Keene The first Nancy Drew mystery, and the reason a generation of girls expected to solve things themselves. 1 recommender The Secrets We Kept Lara Prescott The true-ish story of the CIA operation that turned Doctor Zhivago into a weapon, told largely by the women who typed it. 1 recommender The Selfish Capitalist Oliver James Oliver James links the free-market politics of the 1980s to rising mental illness in English-speaking countries. The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins reframes evolution from the gene's point of view, casting living things as vehicles built to carry genes forward. 1 recommender The Sense of an Ending Frank Kermode Why we imagine ourselves living at the end of times, and what fiction does with that sense of an ending. 1 recommender The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes A retired man receives a bequest that proves his version of his own youth was a convenient edit. 1 recommender The Serpent and the Moon Her Royal Highness Princess Michael of Kent 1 recommender The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Taylor Jenkins Reid A reclusive, ageing Hollywood icon finally tells the truth about her glamorous, ruthless rise, and about all seven husbands. 1 recommender The Shattered Lens Brandon Sanderson The librarians besiege Mokia with an army of living romance novels, and Alcatraz has only a talent for breaking things to stop them. The Shining Stephen King A failing writer takes his family to mind an empty hotel, which has been waiting for exactly him. 1 recommender The Shipping News Annie Proulx A failed newspaperman takes his daughters to Newfoundland and slowly stops apologising for existing. 1 recommender The Shock Doctrine Naomi Klein Unpopular economic programmes imposed in the disoriented window right after a catastrophe. 1 recommender The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway The complete short fiction, where the method was worked out before the novels used it. 1 recommender The Shortest History of Ireland James Hawes Two millennia compressed into a short opinionated narrative, from the Normans through the plantations and the Famine to partition, with maps and actual judgements. 1 recommender The Silence of the Lambs Thomas Harris An FBI trainee hunts a serial killer with the help of Hannibal Lecter, in Thomas Harris's classic thriller. 1 recommender The Silent Duchess Dacia Maraini Dacia Maraini's novel La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa, translated by Dick Kitto and Elspeth Spottiswood, in a Feminist Press edition from 2000. The Silver Wolf Alice Borchardt A noblewoman in eighth-century Rome is bartered into marriage, and nobody knows she was born a wolf. 1 recommender The Simple Path to Wealth J L Collins Built from letters to his daughter, personal finance boiled down to a few durable principles: avoid debt, spend less than you earn, and invest simply. 1 recommender The Singularity Is Near Ray Kurzweil The prediction that machine intelligence will overtake ours, dated and argued rather than merely asserted. 1 recommender The Sirah of the Prophet Yasir Qadhi A single-volume life of the Prophet that shows its sources openly and marks plainly where the earliest accounts disagree with one another. The Sirens’ Call Chris Hayes Hayes argues that the fight for our attention has become the defining struggle of the age, reshaping politics, work, and our sense of self. 1 recommender The Sittaford Mystery Agatha Christie Agatha Christie's snowbound Dartmoor mystery, which appeared in the US under another title. 1 recommender The Skeleton Cupboard Tanya Byron A clinical psychologist looks back on the patients who taught her the job, and what they revealed about her. The Sleep Revolution Arianna Huffington A full-throated case against the cult of sleep deprivation, blending the science of sleep with a plea to stop treating exhaustion as a badge of honor. The Sleepwalkers Arthur Koestler 1 recommender The Snowman Jo Nesbø Jo Nesbø's 2007 crime novel, the seventh in the Harry Hole series, translated by Don Bartlett. The Snows of Yesteryear Gregor von Rezzori Five portraits of the people who raised him in Bukovina, a place whose borders and nationality changed under everyone's feet. 1 recommender The Soccer War Ryszard Kapuscinski Dispatches from twenty-seven coups and revolutions, and the football match that started a war. 1 recommender The Son of Man Jean-Baptiste Del Amo Jean-Baptiste Del Amo's 2021 novel Le Fils de l'homme, built around three characters and a single setting, translated by Frank Wynne in 2024. The Songs of the South Qu Yuan An English translation by David Hawkes of the Chu Ci, an ancient Chinese anthology of poems by Qu Yuan and other poets. 1 recommender