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Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A group of Utopians, unhappy with dissolute, mid-nineteenth-century America, takes to the pastoral life; but the members find little satisfaction in farmwork and communal life because of competing ambitions and idealism. Instead of changing the world, they pursue self-centered paths that ultimately lead to tragedy. Absorbing 1852 novel about love, idealism, and politics bristles with Hawthorne's perceptive wit and intelligence.
2) Arcadia
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding a commune on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. They include Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah's only child, Bit, born soon after the commune. Through Bit, Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and beyond....
3) Paradise
Author
Language
English
Description
As the novel begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby assault the nearby Convent and the women in it.
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain," assault the nearby Convent and the women...
Author
Language
English
Description
"From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row. When a teenage boy runs away from his father's mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six people all desperate for hope and love, scattered across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to L.A....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
When her ex-girlfriend Kay is murdered and everyone in her old commune is a suspect, Dora, while investigating, discovers Kay's death is one of several terrible incidents and is drawn into a twisted conspiracy while trying to stop a potential war between two nefarious companies.
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A fifty-year-old cold case involving California royalty comes back to life-with potentially fatal consequences--in this gripping standalone novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. The Gardener Estate is one of the most storied and beloved places on the West Coast: a magnificent house in vast formal grounds, home to a family that shaped California--and fought hard to conceal the turmoil and...
Author
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
In 1943, LSD is synthesized in Basel. Two decades later, a coterie of grad students at Harvard are gradually drawn into the inner circle of renowned psychologist and psychedelic drug enthusiast Timothy Leary. Fitzhugh Loney, a psychology Ph. D. student and his wife, Joanie, become entranced by the drug's possibilities such that their "research" becomes less a matter of clinical trials and academic papers and instead turns into a free-wheeling exploration...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Emmy, Niall, and Sita and Jonathan miss their train back to London from a Somerset wedding, escaping Britain's worst rail crash in sixty years. Upon reflection of their mortality, the friends reevaluate their lives, and come to a decision. They will all, along with Emmy's daughter Lila, Niall's girlfriend Kat, and Sita and Jonathan's children Jay and Asha, move into the ramshackle manor house Emmy recently inherited in Cornwall. In the idyllic setting,...
Author
Series
Hainish series volume 1
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras--a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart....
Author
Language
English
Description
When Isabelle Poole meets Dr. Preston Grind, she's fresh out of high school, pregnant with her art teacher's baby, and totally on her own. Izzy knows she can be a good mother but without any money or relatives to help, she's left searching. Dr. Grind, an awkwardly charming child psychologist, has spent his life studying family, even after tragedy struck his own. Now, with the help of an eccentric billionaire, he has the chance to create a "perfect...
12) The red grove
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
"When her mother goes missing, a young woman uncovers the secrets beneath her protected community"--
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Business has never been better at the O'Connell Organic Farm and Spa in Blossom Valley, California. But a murder has two of its top employees ploughing for clues at a commune where tree-huggers are wary of the modern world--and a killer may be disturbing their peace…
When Dana Lewis and Zennia Patrakio go to the Blossom Valley farmer's market, they expect to find luscious fruits and vegetables to delight the spa's guests. They are not expecting...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
On author Charlotte Carter's debut Cook County mystery, the New York Times said she "blends street savvy with wry urbanity and delivers a truly modern big-city crime tale." This suspenseful novel goes back to Chicago after the social and political upheavals of the Summer of Love, when three unassuming sleuths began working on a startling new case.
15) Family
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In the 1960s, seventeen-year-old Melinda leaves an abusive home for San Francisco, meets the charismatic Henry, and follows him to his desert commune where sex and drugs are free, but soon his "family" becomes violent against rich and powerful people and she is compelled to join in.
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a ramshackle Victorian mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. But Ursa's powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In landlocked Gainesville, Florida, in the hot, fraught summer of 1999, a college dropout named David sleepwalks through his life--a dull haze of office work and Internet porn--until a run-in with a lost friend jolts him from his torpor. He is drawn into the vibrant but grimy world of Fishgut, a rundown house where a loose collective of anarchists, burnouts, and libertines practice utopia outside society and the law. Some even see their life as a...
Author
Publisher
Catapult
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
Shunned by the literary establishment, Anna, following Ayn Rand's theory of rational selfishness, is offered a chance to kill the ego causing her pain at a mysterious commune on the island of Lesbos where she explores a very different kind of freedom-communal love.
Author
Language
English
Description
"The New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep weaves a richly atmospheric adult debut following three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune as they investigate the disappearances of two outsiders. Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James-a well-known...
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