Meditations
Marcus Aurelius, 180
A Roman emperor's private notebook, written on campaign. Short, blunt reminders to himself about anger, death and other people's opinions, which read like advice addressed to you.
Calm, serene books
Some books slow you down by narrowing their focus: a notebook kept on a campaign, a pond, a few afternoons of argument. Marcus Aurelius wrote his Meditations as blunt reminders to himself about anger, death and other people's opinions, and Cicero's Tusculan Disputations argues its way out of fear and grief with wit rather than comfort. If your days feel loud and crowded, these are the kind of pages that make room around you.
A page that shows it
You keep wishing for a cabin by the sea. There is a cheaper one.
They seek for themselves private retiring places, as country villages, the sea-shore, mountains; yea thou thyself art wont to long much after such places. But all this thou must know proceeds from simplicity in the highest degree. At what time soever thou wilt, it is in thy power to retire into thyself, and to be at rest, and free from all businesses. A man cannot any whither retire better than to his own soul; he especially who is beforehand provided of such things within, which whensoever he doth withdraw himself to look in, may presently afford unto him perfect ease and tranquillity. By tranquillity I understand a decent orderly disposition and carriage, free from all confusion and tumultuousness. Afford then thyself this retiring continually, and thereby refresh and renew thyself. -
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The Maze Runner
James Dashner, 2009
A boy wakes with no memory in a moving lift, among boys who have built a life beside a shifting maze. The rules are simple; the questions aren't.
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The Pelican Brief
John Grisham, 1992
A law student's hunch about two murdered Supreme Court justices makes her the target of a hunt she never asked for.
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Sycamore Row
John Grisham, 2013
After a Mississippi man hangs himself, a handwritten will sets lawyer Jake Brigance against a town determined to bury the past.
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Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau, 1854
A two-year experiment in living cheaply beside a pond, written as a running argument with your own busyness, your possessions, and the life you assumed you had to lead.
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Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
J. K. Rowling, 1999
A prison break, soul-draining guards, and a map that insults its readers: Harry's third year at Hogwarts.
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All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr, 2014
A blind Parisian girl and a German boy with a radio gift are pulled toward each other through the Nazi occupation, in a war story built from small, luminous things.
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Breaking Dawn
Stephenie Meyer, 2008
The fourth Twilight novel: Bella and Edward marry, and every supernatural faction in the Pacific Northwest has an opinion about it.
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Me Before You
Jojo Moyes, 2012
A wry, underemployed Englishwoman takes a care job in a grand house and finds her ordinary life opened up by the most difficult person in it.
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Tusculan Disputations
Cicero, -45
Out of power, Cicero argues himself out of the fear of death and grief — five afternoons of Roman argument at its wittiest and most consoling.
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The Enchiridion
Epictetus, 125
A pocket-sized Stoic manual of about fifty short rules for staying steady when people, luck and your own desires push you around. Every page can be tried on a bad day.
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The Covenant
James Michener, 1980
A sweeping novel of South Africa, from a prehistoric clan beside a dying lake to the modern state, told through the people who claimed the land.
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Death on the Nile
Agatha Christie, 1937
A Nile cruise, a honeymoon, and a murder among strangers who all have a reason. Poirot, on holiday, must untangle a knot of jealousy before the boat docks.
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Ο φτωχός άγιος
Αλέξανδρος Παπαδιαμάντης, 1901
Στις αρχές του 1900, ο Παπαδιαμάντης γράφει για έναν φτωχό τσοπάνο που σπεύδει να προειδοποιήσει το χωριό του· μια ιστορία θυσίας, πίστης και αγάπης για την πατρίδα.
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Insurgent
Veronica Roth, 2012
In a city divided into five virtues, a young woman hunted for being all five must decide what she will sacrifice to stop a war.
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Το κουτί
Henrik Fexeus, 2017
A magician's stage trick hides a real disappearance; a vanished mother, a locked box, and a mind that counts to keep from breaking.
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Terror Keep
Edgar Wallace, 1927
A mild detective with a criminal mind matches wits with a laughing master criminal in a cliff-top house full of secrets.
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The Duel
Anton Chekhov, 1891
A clever, idle Russian runs off with another man's wife, brings her to a hot coast town, and slowly discovers that the problem has travelled with him.
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The Whistler
John Grisham, 2016
A tip about a corrupt Florida judge sends two judicial investigators into a case with higher powers behind it. Grisham's patient procedural suspense and a wry, road-trip partnership.
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Ηρώων τέκνα
Ανδρέας Καρκαβίτσας, 1911
A comic, merciless anatomy of election fever in post-revolutionary Mesolongi, where the sons of heroes trade glory for votes and turn a portrait into a god.
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Inferno
Dan Brown, 2013
A Harvard symbologist wakes in a Florence hospital with two days missing, a killer outside, and a trail hidden in Dante's hell.
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Sometimes I Lie
Alice Feeney, 2017
A narrator who cannot be trusted picks apart memory, marriage and the stories we tell ourselves, in a thriller built on what is heard and what is said.
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The Hunt for Red October
Tom Clancy, 1984
A Cold War thriller built from sonar, bureaucracy and nerve: a Soviet submarine commander takes his newest boat to sea, and no one knows what he intends.
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Frostbite
Richelle Mead, 2008
A half-vampire bodyguard-in-training, a best friend with forbidden magic, and a mentor she can't want: Rose Hathaway's second year at vampire school is a crash course in danger.
A taste of the feed
The faces above him are only boys. His heart doesn't get the message.
And then, as if the lens of a camera had sharpened its focus, the faces cleared. They were boys, all of them—some young, some older. Thomas didn’t know what he’d expected, but seeing those faces puzzled him. They were just teenagers. Kids. Some of his fear melted away, but not enough to calm his racing heart.
The Maze Runner · James Dashner
What a colleague's death looks like from behind a locked door.
Runyan picked his fingernails with the paper clip and smiled slightly to himself. Rosenberg’s death, by any means or method, would be a relief. No, it would be a glorious occasion. The Chief would have to wear black and give a eulogy, but behind locked doors he would chuckle with his law clerks. Runyan liked this thought.
The Pelican Brief · John Grisham
What we talk about when we can't explain a death.
They found Seth Hubbard in the general area where he had promised to be, though not exactly in the condition expected. He was at the end of a rope, six feet off the ground and twisting slightly in the wind. A front was moving through and Seth was soaked when they found him, not that it mattered. Someone would point out that there was no mud on his shoes and no tracks below him, so therefore he was probably hanging and dead when the rain began. Why was that important? Ultimately, it was not.
Sycamore Row · John Grisham
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