First Chapters / Excerpts

Articles Index

The Time Traveler's Wife - Prologue
Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, 'The Time Traveler's Wife,' is one part science fiction and one part love story. It is the compelling tale of Henry DeTamble, a man afflicted with a genetic disorder which causes him to slip sporadically through time, without warning and naked. It is also the story of Clare Abshire, the woman who loves him. Read the prologue.

Excerpt: "The Five People You Meet in Heaven"
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Excerpt

The Secret Life of Bees - excerpt
In "The Secret Life of Bees," Sue Monk Kidd wraps a coming-of-age tale around a search for one's mother, plunks it down into the racially-charged South Carolina of the 1960s and sets it all alight with a dose of feminine spirituality. . It is an inspirational feminist tale with strong female characters. Read the novel's beginning...

The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud - Excerpt
Ben Sherwood's The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud is one of those books that reveals the mysteries of the unseen world around us, gently transforming the pain of loss into hope, healing and even laughter. Romantic and deeply moving, its startling climax reminds us that sometimes tragedies bring about miracles if we simply open our hearts. Read an excerpt from The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud.

Mr. Paradise - Excerpt
Roommates Kelly and Chloe are enjoying their lives and their downtown Detroit loft just fine. Kelly is a Victoria's Secret catalog model. Chloe is an escort, until she decides to ditch her varied clientele in favor of a steady gig as girlfriend to eighty-four-year-old retired lawyer Tony Paradiso, a.k.a. Mr. Paradise... Mr. Paradise is Elmore Leonard at home in Detroit and sharper than ever.

"Elizabeth Costello" - Excerpt
South African writer, J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, "Elizabeth Costello," tells the tale of "a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through an ingenious series of eight formal addresses." The author has been revered in literary cirlces for his cerebrally challenging and thematically important work, and is a two-time winner of the Booker and 2003's Nobel Laureate for Literture.

First Chapter: "Hegemony or Survival"
From Noam Chomsky, author of numerous bestselling works, from "American Power and the New Mandarins" in the 1960s to "9-11" in 2001, a full dissection of America's quest for global supremacy, tracking the US government's aggressive pursuit of policies intended to achieve "full spectrum dominance" at any cost.

Excerpt: "The Virgin Suicides"
Excerpt from "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides

First Chapter: "The Salt Roads"
First Chapter from "The Salt Roads" by Nalo Hopkinson