Contemporary novel project

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Contemporary novel project

• The Perks of Being a Wallflower
• White Oleander
• The Things They Carried
• A Million Little Pieces
• The DaVinci Code
• The Lovely Bones

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

• This is the story of what it's like to grow up in
  high school. More intimate than a diary,
  Charlie's letters are singular and unique,
  hilarious and devastating. We may not know where
  he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing.
  All we know is the world he shares. Caught
  between trying to live his life and trying to run
  from it puts him on a strange course through
  uncharted territory. The world of first dates and
  mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The
  world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture
  Show, when all one requires is that perfect song
  on that perfect drive to feel infinite.

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White Oleander by Janet Finch
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White Oleander by Janet Finch

• Astrid, the teenage narrator of Janet Fitch's
  engrossing first novel, White Oleander, has a
  mother who is as sharp as a new knife. An
  uncompromising poet, Ingrid despises weakness and
  self-pity, telling her daughter that they are
  descendants of Vikings, savages who fought
  fiercely to survive. And when one of Ingrid's
  boyfriends abandons her, she illustrates her
  point, killing the man with the poison of
  oleander flowers. This leads to a life sentence
  in prison, leaving Astrid to teach herself the
  art of survival in a string of Los Angeles foster
  homes.

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The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien
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The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien

• Weapons and good-luck charms carried by U.S.
  soldiers in Vietnam here represent survival, lost
  innocence and the war's interminable legacy.
  "O'Brien's meditations--on war and memory, on
  darkness and light--suffuse the entire work with
  a kind of poetic form, making for a highly
  original, fully realized novel," said PW. 60,000
  first printing.

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A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
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A Million Little Pieces by James Frey

• An alcoholic and crack addict so physically
  mauled by his indulgences that doctors marveled
  that he was still alive, Frey finally cleaned
  himself up at age 23. Here he takes full
  responsibility for nearly destroying himself.

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The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
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The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

• A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the
  Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover
  a secret that has been protected by a clandestine
  society since the days of Christ. The victim is a
  high-ranking agent of this ancient society who,
  in the moments before his death, manages to leave
  gruesome clues at the scene that only his
  granddaughter. Sophie Neveu, and Robert Langdon,
  a famed symbologist, can untangle. . .

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The Lovely Bones by Alice Siebold
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The Lovely Bones by Alice Siebold

• -"I was fourteen when I was murdered on December
  6, 1973," says Susie Salmon in this intriguing
  novel. Teens will immediately be drawn into this
  account of a girl who was raped and killed, and
  tells her story from "heaven." She realizes
  gradually that she is in an interim heaven until
  she can let go of her earthly concerns. The place
  is like school with Seventeen for a textbook and
  no teachers.

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• On Earth, her mother needs to leave the family
  for a time, her sister seems to have Susie
  constantly in her thoughts, her young brother
  grows into a pensive preteen, and her
  grief-stricken father spends much of his time
  seeking out the murderer, even after it seems
  that the police have given up.