When Death has a story to tell, you listen.

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

“The kind of book that can be life-changing.” —The New York Times

“Deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.” —USA Today

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day comes a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.

In post-Arthurian Britain, the wars that once raged between the Saxons and the Britons have finally ceased. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly British couple, set off to visit their son, whom they haven’t seen in years. And, because a strange mist has caused mass amnesia throughout the land, they can scarcely remember anything about him. As they are joined on their journey by a Saxon warrior, his orphan charge, and an illustrious knight, Axl and Beatrice slowly begin to remember the dark and troubled past they all share. By turns savage, suspenseful, and intensely moving, The Buried Giant is a luminous meditation on the act of forgetting and the power of memory.

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he’s put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That’s when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor

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The generation now coming of age has been taught three Great Untruths: their feelings are always right; they should avoid pain and discomfort; and they should look for faults in others and not themselves. These three Great Untruths are part of a larger philosophy that sees young people as fragile creatures who must be protected and supervised by adults. But despite the good intentions of the adults who impart them, the Great Untruths are harming kids by teaching them the opposite of ancient wisdom and the opposite of modern psychological findings on grit, growth, and antifragility. The result is rising rates of depression and anxiety, along with endless stories of college campuses torn apart by moralistic divisions and mutual recriminations.

This is a book about how we got here. First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt take us on a tour of the social trends stretching back to the 1980s that have produced the confusion and conflict on campus today, including the loss of unsupervised play time and the birth of social media, all during a time of rising political polarization.

This is a book about how to fix the mess. The culture of “safety” and its intolerance of opposing viewpoints has left many young people anxious and unprepared for adult life, with devastating consequences for them, for their parents, for the companies that will soon hire them, and for a democracy that is already pushed to the brink of violence over its growing political divisions. Lukianoff and Haidt offer a comprehensive set of reforms that will strengthen young people and institutions, allowing us all to reap the benefits of diversity, including viewpoint diversity.

This is a book for anyone who is confused by what’s happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live and work and cooperate across party lines

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle are the complete adventures of the original and best detective, containing four novels and fifty-six short stories about the most engaging detective of all time, with a foreword by crime writer Ruth Rendell.

The detective Sherlock Holmes – who continues to enthrall millions in film and TV adaptations starring actors like Robert Downey Jr and Benedict Cumberbatch – was the creation of Arthur Conan Doyle, whose crime stories have thrilled readers for well over a century.

Sherlock Holmes is not only the most famous character in crime fiction but arguably the most memorable character in all fiction.

In sixty adventures that pit his extraordinary wits and courage against foreign spies, blackmailers, cultists, petty thieves, murderers, swindlers, police officers (both stupid and smart), and his arch-nemesis Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes, together with his faithful sidekick Doctor John H. Watson, proves himself to be not only the quintessential detective but also the most engaging and entertaining company any reader could ask for.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes allows readers to experience the entire case-history of Holmes and Dr. Watson from start to finish – the stories that have spawned such infamous characters as the devilish Moriarty, the devious Irene Adler and, of course, the legendary hound of the Baskervilles.

In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum.

Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

People lead busy lives with emotional strains that are not only guilt-ridden but have underlying issues, making them too scared to lead better lives. The novel takes a turn from the mindless routine to one of the most significant unresolved problems at the subconscious level and merges the two to put forth a unique picture of the human consciousness as well as individual emotions that haunt people in their daily lives. Sorting through the unusual riddles of her subconscious, the protagonist is shocked to discover a distinct world hidden in one’s unresolved emotions that is bound to change the way one perceives life and interacts with others.

The Conscious Ego takes the reader on a journey with traces hidden from the sight yet pleasingly visible to those who dare to feel. You may never agree with one another about your history or whose interpretation of life is correct; however, one thing that everyone can agree on is humanity. Human misery is universal as it calls for a collective and unconditional love to comprehend, feel, understand and eventually heal its wounds. People can acquire immense power to a purposeful life through their love for others and a conscious living. Can you learn to use your consciousness to decipher the emotional codes by avoiding the displeasures that overshadow life’s real purpose?

Wajeeha Bilal takes you on an inspiring tour of the human evolution through love and tries to infuse your everyday activities with meaning and purpose. She is a writer with a passion for life, awareness and books. She writes to inspire and awaken the masses through mindful awareness.