Most Popular Books by Barbara Kingsolver

Barbara Kingsolver''s acclaimed international bestseller tells the story of an American missionary family in the Congo during a poignant chapter in African history. It spins the tale of the fierce evangelical Baptist, Nathan Price, who takes his wife and four daughters on a missionary journey into the heart of darkness of the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them to Africa all they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it - from garden seeds to the King James Bible - is calamitously transformed on African soil. Told from the perspective of the five women, this is a compelling exploration of African history, religion, family, and the many paths to redemption. The Poisonwood Bible was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and was chosen as the best reading group novel ever at the Penguin/Orange Awards. It continues to be read and adored by millions worldwide.

Taylor Greer grew up poor in rural Kentucky with the goals of avoiding pregnancy and getting away. But when she heads west with high hopes and a barely functioning car, she meets the human condition head-on. By the time Taylor arrives in Tucson, Arizona, she has acquired a child: a three-year-old Cherokee girl named Turtle, and must somehow come to terms with both motherhood and the necessity of putting down roots. “So wry and wise we wish it would never end. . . . The chatty, down-home audacity of Barbara Kingsolver’s remarkable first novel hooks us on the first page.”-San Francisco Chronicle Freshman Common Read: Nebraska Methodist College

VENCEDOR DO PRÊMIO PULITZER DE FICÇÃO Demon Copperhead é um romance brilhante que atrai, cativa e conquista o coração ao evocar a inesquecível jornada de amadurecimento de um jovem herói, filho de mãe adolescente e nascido em uma casa móvel modesta, sem trunfos além da boa aparência do seu pai, de um humor cáustico e de um talento aguerrido para a sobrevivência. Em sua implacável voz narrativa, Demon conta como enfrenta os perigos modernos do sistema de acolhimento, o trabalho infantil, as escolas abandonadas, o sucesso como atleta, o vício, os amores desastrosos e as perdas esmagadoras. Inspirada por Charles Dickens e sua obra David Copperfield, Kingsolver transporta o romance épico vitoriano para o sul dos EUA, explorando os problemas que ainda afetam as sociedades do século XXI. Demon Copperhead fala por uma nova geração de garotos perdidos e por todos aqueles nascidos em lugares belos e amaldiçoados que não conseguem pensar em abandonar.

Barbara Kingsolver, a writer praised for her"extravagantly gifted narrative voice" (New York Times Book Review), has created with this novel a hymn to wildness that celebrates the prodigal spirit of human nature, and of nature itself. Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer''s wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the complexities of a world neither of them expected. Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth. With the richness that characterizes Barbara Kingsolver''s finest work, Prodigal Summer embraces pure thematic originality and demonstrates a balance of narrative and ideas that only an accomplished novelist could render so beautifully.

Barbara Kingsolver tells students about her family’s adventure as they move to a fram in southern Appalachia and spend a year on a locally-produced diet, realigning their lives with the local food chain and paying close attention to the provenance of all they consume. In that year, they find themselves eager to move away from the typical food scenerio of American families: a refrigerator packed with processed, factory-farmed food transported long distances using nonrenewable fuels, and in their search for another way to live and eat, they begin to recover what Kingsolver considers our nation’s lost appreciation for farms and the natural processes of food production.

In her new essay collection, the beloved author of High Tide in Tucson brings to us out of one of history''s darker moments an extended love song to the world we still have. From its opening parable gleaned from recent news about a lost child saved in an astonishing way, the book moves on to consider a world of surprising and hopeful prospects, ranging from an inventive conservation scheme in a remote jungle to the backyard flock of chickens tended by the author''s small daughter. Whether she is contemplating the Grand Canyon, her vegetable garden, motherhood, adolescence, genetic engineering, TV-watching, the history of civil rights, or the future of a nation founded on the best of all human impulses, these essays are grounded in the author''s belief that our largest problems have grown from the earth''s remotest corners as well as our own backyards, and that answers may lie in those places, too. In the voice Kingsolver''s readers have come to rely on—sometimes grave, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately persuasive—Small Wonder is a hopeful examination of the people we seem to be, and what we might yet make of ourselves.

In her most accomplished novel, Barbara Kingsolver takes us on an epic journey from the Mexico City of artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo to the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. The Lacuna is a poignant story of a man pulled between two nations as they invent their modern identities. Born in the United States, reared in a series of provisional households in Mexico—from a coastal island jungle to 1930s Mexico City—Harrison Shepherd finds precarious shelter but no sense of home on his thrilling odyssey. Life is whatever he learns from housekeepers who put him to work in the kitchen, errands he runs in the streets, and one fateful day, by mixing plaster for famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. He discovers a passion for Aztec history and meets the exotic, imperious artist Frida Kahlo, who will become his lifelong friend. When he goes to work for Lev Trotsky, an exiled political leader fighting for his life, Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution, newspaper headlines and howling gossip, and a risk of terrible violence. Meanwhile, to the north, the United States will soon be caught up in the internationalist goodwill of World War II. There in the land of his birth, Shepherd believes he might remake himself in America''s hopeful image and claim a voice of his own. He finds support from an unlikely kindred soul, his stenographer, Mrs. Brown, who will be far more valuable to her employer than he could ever know. Through darkening years, political winds continue to toss him between north and south in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach—the lacuna—between truth and public presumption. With deeply compelling characters, a vivid sense of place, and a clear grasp of how history and public opinion can shape a life, Barbara Kingsolver has created an unforgettable portrait of the artist—and of art itself. The Lacuna is a rich and daring work of literature, establishing its author as one of the most provocative and important of her time.

"Clever. . . magical. . . beautifully crafted. Kingsolver spins you around the philosophic world a dozen times." — Milwaukee Sentinel "Kingsolver''s essays should be savored like quiet afternoons with a friend." —New York Times Book Review In this brilliant essay collection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver turns to her favored literary terrain to explore themes of family, community, and the natural world. With the eyes of a scientist and the vision of a poet, Kingsolver writes about notions as diverse as modern motherhood, the history of private property, and the suspended citizenship of humans in the animal kingdom. Kingsolver''s canny pursuit of meaning from an inscrutable world compels us to find instructions for life in surprising places: a museum of atomic bomb relics, a West African voodoo love charm, an iconographic family of paper dolls, the ethics of a wild pig who persistently invades a garden, a battle of wills with a two-year-old, or a troop of oysters who observe high tide in the middle of Illinois. In sharing her thoughts about the urgent business of being alive, Kingsolver the essayist employs the same keen eyes, persuasive tongue, and understanding heart that characterize her acclaimed fiction. In High Tide in Tucson, Kingsolver is defiant, funny, and courageously honest.

New York Times Bestseller "An intricate story that entwines considerations of faith and faithlessness, inquiry, denial, fear and survival in gorgeously conceived metaphor. Kingsolver has constructed a deeply affecting microcosm of a phenomenon that is manifesting in many different tragic ways, in communities and ecosystems all around the globe.” — Seattle Times A truly stunning and unforgettable work from the extraordinary New York Times bestselling author of The Lacuna (winner of the Orange Prize), The Poisonwood Bible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize), and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Flight Behavior is a brilliant and suspenseful novel set in present day Appalachia; a breathtaking parable of catastrophe and denial that explores how the complexities we inevitably encounter in life lead us to believe in our particular chosen truths. Kingsolver''s riveting story concerns a young wife and mother on a failing farm in rural Tennessee who experiences something she cannot explain, and how her discovery energizes various competing factions—religious leaders, climate scientists, environmentalists, politicians—trapping her in the center of the conflict and ultimately opening up her world. Flight Behavior represents contemporary American fiction at its finest.

“Extraordinarily fine. Kingsolver has a Chekhovian tenderness toward her characters. . . . The title story is pure poetry.” —Russell Banks, New York Times Book Review With the same wit and sensitivity that have come to characterize her highly praised and beloved novels, acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver, recipient of numerous literary awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Humanities Medal, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and National Book Foundation''s Medal for Distinguish Contribution to American Letters, gives us a rich and emotionally resonant collection of short stories. Spreading her memorable characters over landscapes ranging from Northern California to the hills of eastern Kentucky and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Kingsolver tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance. In every setting, her distinctive voice— at times comic, but often heartrending—rings true as she explores the twin themes of family ties and the life choices one must ultimately make alone. Homeland and Other Stories creates a world of love and possibility that readers will want to take as their own.

A moving and suspenseful Native American love story. "Rich, complex, witty ... This is a sweet book, full of bitter pain; a beautiful weaving of the light and the dark. This one will be with us for a long time." --Washington Post Book World

Barbara Kingsolver opens her home to us, as she and her family attempt a year of eating only local food, much of it from their own garden. With characteristic warmth, Kingsolver shows us how to put food back at the centre of the political and family agenda. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is part memoir, part journalistic investigation, and is full of original recipes.