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The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
The meeting of Macon Leary, a travel-hater who makes his living writing travel guides called "The Accidental Tourist In...," and frizzy-haired, non-stop talker Muriel sets off an unexpected chain of events.

Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund
Seeking adventure, Una Spenser runs away, masquerades as a boy, and joins a whaling ship which begins a life for her of adventure and trials which enables Una to grow into a strong and intelligent woman.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of treasure buried in the pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. What starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a meditation on the treasures found within.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Based on a sensational trial that made headlines throughout the world, a nineteenth-century housemaid endures life imprisonment for the murders of her employer and mistress, murders she may not have committed, while a doctor tries to help her recover her memories of the past.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
John Grady Cole, 16, leaves Texas for Mexico in 1950 and becomes an essential vaquero in a hacienda's program.

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler
Marrying quickly during World War II after falling in love at first sight, a mismatched couple discovers that their very different personalities and approaches to life are taking a toll on their lives, their relationship, and their family.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
In 1939 New York City, Joe Kavalier, a refugee from Hitler's Prague, joins forces with his Brooklyn-born cousin, Sammy Clay, to create comic-book superheroes inspired by their own fantasies, fears, and dreams.

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
When Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student, falls in love with her math teacher, the love affair threatens the intimate relationship between Amy and her mother, Isabelle, whose feelings are influenced by the shame of her own past.

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Wheelchair-bound historian Lyman Ward decides to write about the frontier lives of his grandparents at a time when he has lost connection with his living family.

Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik
From the initial formation of The Freesia Court Book Club and over the course of the next thirty years, five women in small-town Minnesota share the events, triumphs, tragedies, hardships, joys, and sorrows of their lives, in a heartwarming story of friendship.

Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
In the bloody sectarian upheaval that ripped Sri Lanka apart in the 1980s and '90s, the enemy is difficult to identify. The protagonist, Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan, left her homeland at 18 and returns to it 15 years later only as part of an international human rights fact-finding mission.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This classic novel tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

Atonement by Ian McEwan
In a crumbling English mansion in 1935, young Briony tells a lie that sends a man to jail. Five years later, a solider retreats during World War II. These story threads come together in the book's surprising conclusion.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The story of a married woman who pursues love outside a stuffy, middle-class marriage, The Awakening portrays the mind of a woman seeking fulfillment of her essential nature.

Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler
In this deeply moving novel a woman of fifty-three tries to find out who she truly is compared to who her world believes she is.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
Two boys are sent to the countryside to be re-educated in this fable set during China's Cultural Revolution. They discover hope through forbidden western literature, but find hope can be cruel and corrupting.

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
Taylor Greer hits the road wanting only to get as far away from Kentucky as possible, ending up in Arizona with a 3-year-old Cherokee girl she has inherited from a woman in a bar.

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Nine-year-old Eliza Naumann is considered an unspectacular child -- until she surprises everyone by winning her school spelling bee. But just as Eliza begins to shine, her family starts falling apart.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
A family saga chronicles a century of life as four generations of Yorkshire women move through two World Wars, coronations, secrets, heartbreak, and happiness, all seen through the eyes of an inimitable narrator named Ruby Lennox.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
In the Vice President's house in an unnamed South American country, what begins as an elegant dinner party turns into a kidnapping that goes awry when the President the terrorists are intent on capturing misses the dinner. When the government refuses to give in to their demands, the hostage situation continues for a number of weeks during which a pleasant domesticity, enlivened by opera singing, begins to blur the lines between captive and captor.

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani
Town pharmacist and local spinster Ave Maria has been keeping the secrets of Big Stone Gap for a long time, but now a skeleton is about to tumble from her own family closet.

Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant
Turning fifteen in Renaissance Florence, Alessandra Cecchi becomes intoxicated with the works of a young painter whom her father has brought to the city to decorate the family's Florentine palazzo.

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Chronicles the story of an alienated New Mexico boy who seeks an answer to his questions about life in his relationship with Ultima, a magical healer.

Blessings by Anna Quindlen
When a teenage couple abandons their baby at the gate of the estate owned by Lydia Blessing, Skip Cuddy, the estate caretaker, decides to raise the child himself, a decision that has a profound effect on the lives of everyone in the community, in a story of love, secrets, and redemption.

Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Iris describes the 1945 death of her sister, who drives her car off a bridge, followed, two years later, by the death of her husband, in a story that features a novel-within-a-novel about two unnamed lovers who meet in a dark backstreet room.

Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott
When she stumbles upon a small rubber blue shoe left behind in her deceased father's car, Mattie Ryder, a recently divorced mother of two young children struggles to uncover the truth about her dysfunctional upbringing. In the process, she finds the foundation for a new relationship with her mother and the potential for a new life.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, an African-American girl in an America whose love for blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, people will notice her, and her world will be different.

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
When Ruth Young comes across a stack of letters in Chinese calligraphy written by her ailing mother, she discovers the truth about her mother's life as the daughter of the famous bonesetter in the village of Xian Xin, China.

The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison
A book about a trolley strike lent from one friend to the other plays an unexpected role in the long and difficult friendship of Toby Ruben and Deborah Laidlaw.

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from the impoverished Haitian village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York to be reunited with her mother, where she gains a legacy of shame that can only be healed when she returns to Haiti, to the woman who first reared her.

Cane River by Lalita Tademy
Follows four generations of African American women from slavery to the early twentieth century as they struggle for economic security and the future of their families along the Cane River in rural Louisiana.

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
During her family's annual car trip from Chicago to Mexico City, Lala Reyes listens to stories about her family, including her grandmother, the descendant of a renowned dynasty of shawl makers, whose magnificent striped shawl has come into Lala's possession.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Private detective Jackson Brodie finds his own need for resolution sparked by three investigations including those of two sisters who discover a shocking clue to the disappearance of their third sister thirty years earlier, a lawyer whose life is turned upside-down when his daughter joins the firm, and a woman whose past mistakes and demanding family life culminate in a violent escape.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Depicts the struggles of a U.S. airman attempting to survive the lunacy and depravity of a World War II base.

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott
When the late Billy Lynch's relatives and friends gather together to keep his memory alive, stories are woven and memories relived detailing his life in the close Irish-American community and the intricate feelings that resurface

China Boy by Gus Lee
An American-born son of an aristocratic Chinese family struggles with the uncertainties of growing up torn between two cultures in a tough San Francisco neighborhood during the 1950s.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris
When the beautiful and mysterious Vianne moves to Lansquenet and opens a chocolate shop across from the church, the inhabitants of the tiny village find themselves torn between the solemn law of religion and the joyful rewards of Vianne's confections.

The Chosen by Chaim Potok
A baseball game between Jewish schools is the catalyst that starts a bitter rivalry between two Brooklyn boys and their fathers during the 1940s.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Inman, a wounded Confederate soldier, walks away from the ravages of the Civil War back home to Ada, his prewar sweetheart. Inman's odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South interweaves with Ada's struggle to revive her father's farm.

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns
Modern times come to a conservative Southern town in 1906 when the proprietor of the general store elopes with a woman half his age, and worse yet, a Yankee.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.

Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
Born as an old man, Max Tivoli lives his life aging backwards, falling in love and living an odd, sometimes terrifying life in San Francisco at the turn of the nineteenth century.

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss
An outsider in eighteenth-century London, Jewish pugilist and hired thug Benjamin Weaver prowls the city's mean streets in the service of England's gentry tracking down debtors and thieves.

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
A fifty-year epic follows the lives of the residents of the Greek island Cephallonia, exploring their peaceful, remote experiences before the onset of the Second World War.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
What appears as a typical Midwestern family is anything but as preparations are made for an ideal family holiday. Alfred, the father is losing his fight to control Parkinson's disease and dementia. His wife, Enid is no longer in control of her household and feels her choices slipping away. Their three grown children are struggling with their own lives. But for this Christmas, Enid is determined to bring them together for the perfect family holiday.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
Sugar, an alluring nineteen-year-old prostitute in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of 1870's London society offers us intimacy with a host of loveable, maddening and superbly realized characters. At the heart of this novel is the compelling struggle of a young woman trying to lift her body and soul out of the gutter.

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
In the 1930s, Billy and his family come to Hidalgo County, New Mexico, where he becomes obsessed with a wild wolf that lives a precarious existence threatened by the region's ranchers.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
This deceptively simple story traces the lives and hopes of two couples who met as young parents in Madison, Wisconsin in the early part of the 20th century. Their friendship continues through the years, and provides a glimpse into the transformative power of friendship and marriage.

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson
In the rural farm country of northern Ontario, the lives of members of two families--the farming Pye family and the Morrisons, zoologist Kate Morrison and her three brothers--are brought together and torn apart by misunderstanding, resentment, family love, and tragedy.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
A black minister from the country searches for his son, now a criminal, in this story on South African apartheid.

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Despite his overwhelming fear of interacting with people, Christopher, a mathematically-gifted, autistic fifteen-year-old boy, decides to investigate the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers secret information about his mother.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair by Ivan Doig
From a Scottish port, nineteen-year-olds Angus McCaskill and Rob Barclay embark on a new life in America as homesteaders in the beautiful Two Medicine country of Montana. While forging new lives, the two engage in a fateful contest of the heart in this novel of the uncertainties of friendship and love.

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
In 1865, the preparations of the Dante Club--led by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes--to release the first translation of Dante's "The Divine Comedy" are threatened by a series of murders that re-create episodes from "Inferno."

Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
An orphan raised in Valparaiso, Chile, by a Victorian spinster and her rigid brother, Eliza Sommers follows her lover to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 and meets a Chinese herbalist, who becomes her soul mate, on the journey.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
In a novel set in post-apartheid South Africa, a fifty-two-year-old college professor who has lost his job for sleeping with a student tries to relate to his daughter, Lucy, who works with an ambitious African farmer.

Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
When her fiance is left paralyzed following a tragic accident, a woman begins to question her familiar world, from her everyday life to her relationships, as she sets out to rediscover her own identity.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
When Siddi inadvertently describes some revealing things about her Southern childhood in a newspaper interview, her mother, Vivi, virtually disowns her. Vivi's lifelong friends, the Ya-Ya's, set in motion a plan to bring the mother and daughter back together using a scrapbook of childhood memories that they ask Vivi to put together.

The Dogs of Babel by Carolyn Parkhurst
Discovering clues that indicate that his beloved wife may not have died accidentally, Paul Iverson begins a perilous search for the truth while attempting to teach his dog, who witnessed the crime, to communicate.

Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman
In a novel set in London during the Industrial Revolution, a prostitute borrows a blue dress to attract a higher class of client and is shadowed through the streets by an evil old woman hired by the dress' owner to keep an eye on her.

Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz
A stunning portrait of the ties that bind sisters together and the forces that tear them apart, of the dangers of keeping secrets and the explosive repercussions when they are exposed.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
The biblical account of Cain and Abel is echoed in the history of two generations of the Trask family in California.

Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

Embers by Sandor Marai
Following a forty-one year separation, two men reunite in a castle at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains to share stories and accusations touching on their lives and that of a third person, the now-dead lady of the castle.

The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
After the death of his father, the accomplished, flamboyant, and controversial Judge Oliver Garland, his son Talcott, a law professor, must unravel the truth about his father's life, a quest that brings him face to face with old scandals, family secrets, and justice gone wrong.

Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town-and seems to believe that "everything" includes Miles himself.

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
Follows a young writer as he travels to the farmlands of Eastern Europe, where he embarks on a quest to find Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, and, guided by his young Ukrainian translator, he discovers an unexpected past that will resonate far into the future.

The Facts of Life by Graham Joyce
A remarkable young boy, Frank Arthur Vine, the product of a passionate encounter between his mother Cassie and an American G.I., is brought up by his mother's six very different--and idiosyncratic--sisters and his charismatic grandmother after his mother is determined to be too unstable, in an emotional and multifaceted novel set against the backdrop of Coventry, England.

Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives -- even destroy them.

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier
In a novel of manners and social divisions set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century England, two girls from different classes become friends, and their families' lives become intertwined in the process.

The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
A collection of vignettes set in a coffee shop explores the subtle movements of love between ordinary people.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
In India during the mid-1970s, after a "state of internal emergency" is declared, four very different people--a widowed seamstress, a student, and a man and his nephew who have fled their village's caste violence--find their lives becoming inextricably intertwined.

Fleur De Leigh's Life of Crime by Diane Leslie
A witty autobiographical novel follows the adventures and misadventures of an independent teenage girl as she struggles to find meaning in an artificial privileged world and finds friendship with Constantine, a worldly gardener.

Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve
Set on the coast of New Hampshire in 1899, this novel chronicles the love affair of a young woman from a prosperous family, Olympia, and her suitor, a married doctor many years her senior, and the struggles she encounters when she loses her father's support because of the unusual relationship.

Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund
In the wake of racial tensions in 1960s Alabama, sheltered white college student Stella participates in her first freedom movement and finds her life changed in several ways when she develops friendships with local African Americans.

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
Gathering for their weekly knitting club at a small yarn shop on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a group of friends shares such challenges as raising children, navigating the ups and downs of their careers, and pursuing uncertain relationships.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Cleo Threadgood, 86, shares a lifetime of memories of Whistle Stop, Alabama, where the social scene centered on its one café with Evelyn Couch, a younger woman who is looking for meaning in her life.

Gap Creek by Robert Morgan
Set in South Carolina in the early part of the twentieth century, this novel is a compassionate tale of poverty-stricken lives in Appalachia, centered around Julie Harmon who carries on with the farm after her father and brother die.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
As the Reverend John Ames approaches the hour of his own death, he writes a letter to his son chronicling three previous generations of his family, a story that stretches back to the Civil War and reveals uncomfortable secrets about the family of preachers.

The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
A young Scottish woman, in 1903, travels to Peking to marry a British military attaché. She becomes a scandal to the British community by having an affair with Count Kuriha, a Japanese soldier. She is shunned by her own people, and not really accepted by the Japanese either. We are given the account of a hard, lonely, but fascinating life in an alien culture.

Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland
Vreeland follows the trail of an unknown painting by the Dutch master Vermeer, from present day Philadelphia back in time to the creation of the painting in the artist's household.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
A poor seventeenth-century servant girl knows her place in the household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, but when he begins to paint her, nasty whispers and rumors circulate throughout the town.

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
A witty and incisive debut novel follows the life lessons of Jane, from defiant teenager to reluctant career girl, as she makes her way through love, sex, relationships, and workplace perils, prompted by dubious advice from a pop-psych guide to life.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
This Booker Prize-winning novel, praised for its "extraordinary linguistic inventiveness," is set in India in the late 1960s, as young twins grapple with complex family relationships and emotions following a tragedy.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
Wang Lang, a simple peasant farmer, takes as a wife a battered slave girl who becomes an indomitable, loyal woman. Working the land together, they prosper and increase their holdings, yet Wang eventually betrays his family and neglects the earth he had worshipped.

Good Grief by Lolly Winston
Grieving over the death of her husband from cancer, thirty-six-year-old Sophie Stanton finds her personal and professional world in a shambles and, in an attempt to reinvent her life, moves to Ashland, Oregon, where she encounters a troubled thirteen-year-old girl, a job as the Salad Girl at the local restaurant, and a cute actor as she struggles to recover.

Good Faith by Jane Smiley
Emerging from an ugly divorce in the early 1980s, real estate salesman Joe Stratford is reluctant to join his friend Marcus in a get-rich-quick scheme and wonders about the advances of a free-spirited married woman.

Good Harbor by Anita Diamant
Follows the growing friendship between fifty-nine-year-old Kathleen, recently diagnosed with breast cancer, and the slightly younger Joyce, increasingly distant from her teenage daughter and struggling to write a second novel.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
Depicts the hardships and suffering endured by the Joads as they journey from Oklahoma to California during the Depression.

The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier find that survival and worldly achievement are not enough. His counterpart, a young girl living in occupied Japan and tending her dying brother, falls in love, and in the process discovers herself.

Half a Life by V.S. Naipul
The son of a man who, inspired by Gandhi, married below his caste, travels to New York where he struggles to find his identity and forge a career as a writer.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
A chilling look at the near future presents the story of Offred, a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, once the United States, an oppressive world where women are no longer allowed to read and are valued only as long as they are viable for reproduction.

Hanna's Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson
As Anna holds vigil at her mother's bedside, she longs for reconciliation--not just with her mother, Johanna, but with her grandmother, Hanna, a woman she never really knew. Determined to piece together the fragments of her past, Anna sifts through tattered letters, cracked diaries, and old photographs, as the vivid lives of Hanna and Johanna at last begin to unfold.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
In a small Georgia mill town during the depression, four misfits form a group that revolves around a deaf-mute whose sole companion has been sent to an insane asylum.

Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley
A novel set in the world of thoroughbred racing follows a group of trainers, jockeys, and "track brats" on a two-year journey through the racing cycle.

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Ruth, a young girl struggling to overcome haunting family memories in a town which will not let her forget, gradually grows close to Sylvie, the sister of her dead mother.

Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
A worldly man interrupts the calm, melancholy life of romantic novelist Edith Hope with a "quaintly treacherous proposal of marriage."

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Three novellas, intricately interwoven and connected in different ways to Virginia Woolf and her 1925 novel, Mrs. Dalloway, eventually intersect in a conclusion of surprise and beauty.

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipal
In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
Three fragile yet determined people are drawn by their competing desires to the same small house in the California hills and become dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis.

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
The story of Esperanza Cordero, a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago.

How to Be Good by Nick Hornby
Katie, a liberal, urban mother and doctor from North London, finds her life turned upside down when her husband, David, undergoes an outrageous spiritual transformation, in a hilarious novel about marriage, parenthood, religion, and morality.

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
In a classic English story, Cassandra Mortmain chronicles in her diary what happens to her eccentric family when a young American man inherits the local estate. The bittersweet love story that ensues is far more complicated than she ever imagines.

Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio
In the 1950s, in rural Kentucky, ten-year-old Icy Sparks feels different because she is being raised by her grandparents, and is further ostracized when she begins to show symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome, and eventually comes to prevail over her disorder.

I Don't Know How She Does It by Allison Pearson
In a pointed dramatization of the problems of working mothers, Kate Reddy, a hedge fund manager and mother of two, struggles to juggle her professional and personal lives and to balance--often unsuccessfully--the tightrope of work and home.

I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb
Dominick Birdsey, a forty-year-old housepainter living in Three Rivers, Connecticut, finds his subdued life greatly disturbed when his identical twin brother Thomas, a paranoid schizophrenic, commits a shocking act of self-mutilation.

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
In a crumbling house in the remote northeastern Himalayas, an embittered, elderly judge finds his peaceful retirement turned upside down by the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, but their world--and Sai's romance with her handsome Nepali tutor--is threatened by a Nepalese insurgency.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
A debut collection of short fiction blends elements of Indian traditions with the complexities of American culture in such tales as "A Temporary Matter," in which a young Indian-American couple confronts their grief over the loss of a child, while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout.

Ironweed by William Kennedy
In 1938, Francis Phelan, a murderer, is reduced to flop houses and hobo jungles and returns to a depressed Albany, where--as a gravedigger--he shuffles his rag tag way to survival.

Jewel by Bret Lott
A mother fights for the dignity of her youngest daughter against the backdrop of a pure and simple way of life in the backwoods of Mississippi in 1943.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
In nineteenth-century England, all is going well for rich, reclusive Mr. Norell, who has regained some of the power of England's magicians from the past, until a rival magician, Jonathan Strange, appears and becomes Mr Norrell's pupil.

Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
In 1949, four Chinese women--drawn together by the shadow of their past--begin meeting in San Francisco to play mah jong, invest in stocks and "say" stories. They call their gathering the Joy Luck Club--and forge a relationship that binds them for more than three decades.

Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman
The story of a devout Orthodox Jewish woman, a mother of five spending the summer in a tiny town in upstate New York, who feels the need for a project of her own . . . a secular project, outside her family and her cloistered community.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul during the final days of the monarchy. When Amir is forced to flee with his prominent and wealthy father for a new life in California, he leaves behind Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Amir cannot, however, leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones
When a plantation proprietor and former slave--now possessing slaves of his own--dies, his household falls apart in the wake of a slave rebellion and corrupt underpaid patrollers who enable free black people to be sold into slavery.

Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler
Forty-year-old Delia Grinstead, mother of three almost-grown children, impulsively walks away from her marriage and sets off into the unknown to begin an entirely new life, but suddenly she discovers that she is accumulating fresh responsibilities.

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
Returning to the Heart Lake School for Girls as a Latin teacher to start a new life with her daughter, Jane is haunted by past tragedy and terrifying memories when she begins receiving menacing messages.

The Language of Threads by Gail Tsukiyama
Pei travels with a young orphan named Ji Shen to 1930s Hong Kong, where they receive help from a British woman, but experience the chaos of the Japanese occupation.

The Last Girls by Lee Smith
Thirty-five years after a trip down the Mississippi on a raft with their classmates, four women are reunited to cruise the river once again where they plan to release the ashes of a fellow rafter, Margaret "Baby" Ballou.

The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve
After Thomas Janes, a celebrated poet, and Linda Fallon, a poet and his childhood sweetheart, meet unexpectedly at a poetry reading in Toronto after 24 years, details of their hidden past are slowly uncovered as the book works its way back through time to the first time they met.

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Grant Wiggins, a college-educated man who returns to his hometown to teach, forms an unlikely bond with Jefferson, a young Black man convicted of murder and sentenced to death, when he is asked to impart his learning and pride to the condemned man.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Possessing encyclopedia-like intelligence, unusual zookeeper's son Pi Patel sets sail for America, but when the ship sinks, he escapes on a life boat and is lost at sea with a dwindling number of animals until only he and a hungry Bengal tiger remain.

Little Friend by Donna Tartt
Growing up in a small Mississippi town in a family haunted by the murder of her brother, Robin, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes lives in a world of her imagination, until, at the age of twelve, she decides to find Robin's murderer and exact her revenge.

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
The lives and destinies of the Kashpaw and the Lamartine families intertwine on and around a North Dakota Indian reservation from 1934 to 1984, in a tale of survival, tenacity, tradition, injustice, and love.

Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
The spirit of fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon describes her murder, her surprise at her new home in heaven, and her witness to her family's grief, efforts to find the killer, and attempts to come to terms with what has happened.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
Two Cuban musicians, recent immigrants, come to New York, becoming the Mambo Kings. Their families, fellow musicians, lovers, triumphs and tragedies are portrayed in this rich and enthralling novel about passion and loss, memory and desire.

March by Geraldine Brooks
In a story inspired by the father character in Little Women and drawn from the journals and letters of Louisa May Alcott's father Bronson, a man leaves behind his family to serve in the Civil War and finds his marriage and beliefs profoundly challenged by his experiences.

Master Butcher's Singing Club by Louise Erdrich
Returning to his quiet German village home after World War I, trained killer Fidelis Waldvogel, accompanied by his new wife, starts a new life in America and finds his life irrevocably changed by a new relationship.

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Because her mother is dying and her father old, Chiyo, nine, is sold to a wealthy geisha house in Gion where she learns her trade and works it in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
In a tale spanning twenty-five years, a doctor delivers his newborn twins during a snowstorm and, rashly deciding to protect his wife from their baby daughter's affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child.

A Memory of War by Frederick Busch
When a new patient declares that he is his half-brother, psychologist Alexander Lescziak, the son of Polish immigrants, confronts painful truths about his life as he envisions his mother's relationship with a German prisoner of war.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
A young girl discovers she's actually a hermaphrodite in her teen years. This is a story of her family's history beginning with their escape from Greece as well as her own experiences growing up in Detroit in the 1960's.

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
An obstetrician and the daughter of a respected midwife from a rural Vermont community recounts the summer of her thirteenth year, when her mother stood accused of murdering a woman during a difficult delivery.

Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Tilo, an Indian clairvoyant, becomes queen of the pirates who kidnapped her for her powers, and she gains immortality and the skills of a mistress of spices, which she uses to help mortals before falling in love with Raven.

Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Retells the legend of Arthur as perceived by Viviane, the Lady of the Lake and high priestess of Avalon, Arthur's mother Igraine, his Christian wife Guinevere, and the sorceress Morgaine.

Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh
Follows twenty-five years in the life of Ken Kimble as seen through the eyes of his three wives, from Birdie, who struggles with his abandonment; to heiress Joan, who is recovering from a personal loss; to Dinah, who suffers from an unhappy past.

My Antonia by Willa Cather
In the late nineteenth century, Antonia, a fourteen-year-old immigrant girl from Bohemia, and Jim Burden, a ten-year-old orphan boy, arrive in Black Hawk, Nebraska, and in teaching each other form a friendship that will last a lifetime.

My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
In sixteenth-century Istanbul, a furor erupts when the Sultan hires a group of artists to illuminate a great book in the European style at a time in which all figurative art is considered Islamic heresy, but the situation becomes worse when one of the miniaturists vanishes.

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Conceived to provide a bone marrow match for her leukemia-stricken sister, teenage Kate begins to question her moral obligations in light of countless medical procedures and decides to fight for the right to make decisions about her own body.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
An incisive portrait of the immigrant experience follows the Ganguli family from their traditional life in India through their arrival in Massachusetts in the late 1960s and their difficult melding into an American way of life.

The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck
Pursued by the future dictator of nineteenth-century Paraguay, Irish courtesan Ella Lynch struggles with isolation and displacement in spite of her power as his mistress, and witnesses the nation's victimization in the wake of her lover's arrogant ambitions.

1984 by George Orwell
A chilling portrait of a totalitarian society under the ever-watchful gaze of Big Brother, where love, privacy, and individuality are banned.

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
PI "Precious" Ramotswe sets up a detective agency in Botswana on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, making her the only female detective in the country. Eventually, troubled people come to Precious with a variety of concerns. Potentially philandering husbands, seemingly schizophrenic doctors, and a missing boy who may have been killed by witch doctors all compel Precious to roam about in her tiny van, searching for clues.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
The story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.

Open House by Elizabeth Berg
After a devastating divorce, Samantha Morrow decides to take in border to meet the mortgage payments and support her 11-year-old son. In the process, Samantha learns how to re-create her life by opening her house and heart to strangers and new possibilities.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
A novel of the future explores a world that has been devastated by ecological and scientific disasters.

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
This extraordinary novel provides a close look into Cairo society at the end of World War I. Mahfouz's vehicle for this examination is the family of al-Sayyid Ahmad, a middle-class merchant who runs his family strictly according to the Koran and directs his own behavior according to his desires. Consequently, while his wife and two daughters remain cloistered at home, and his three sons live in fear of his harsh will, al-Sayyid Ahmad nightly explores the pleasures of Cairo.

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
Set in 1950s rural Minnesota, Enger weaves spirituality into this coming-of-age quest novel. The family's search for one of it's sons is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a love story, and a haunting meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.

The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
In 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake leaves his quiet life in London for the jungles of Burma, where he has been asked to repair a rare Erard grand piano belonging to a British army surgeon-major who uses the piano and music to help keep the peace among warring local Burmese princes.

The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve
The wife of a pilot who has been killed in a crash determines to find out the truth behind a bizarre mystery that has surfaced around his private life.

Plainsong by Kent Haruf
An unlikely extended family is formed when a high school teacher helps a pregnant student make a home with two elderly bachelor ranchers.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
A fanatical evangelical Baptist preacher takes his wife and four daughters to the Belgian Congo, where the family's fate intersects with that of the newly independent war-torn country.

Possession by A.S. Byatt
Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, two rather unfulfilled young literary scholars, unexpectedly become figures of romance as they discover a surprising link between the two poets on whom they are authorities. Byatt deftly plays with literary genres--Romantic quest, campus satire, detective story, myth, fairy tale--as Maud and Roland become deeply involved in the unfolding story of a secret relationship between the Victorian poets Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Elizabeth Bennett is young, clever and attractive, but her mother is a nightmare and she and her four sisters are in dire need of financial security and escape in the shape of husbands. The arrival of nice Mr. Bingley and arrogant Mr. Darcy in the neighbourhood turns all their lives upside down.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver Three stories of human love are woven together within a larger tapestry of lives amid the mountains and farms of southern Appalachia. Over the course of one humid summer, this novel's intriguing protagonists face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Not until he becomes a law student after World War II does Michael Berg realize that the woman who found him ill and nursed him through hepatitis was illiterate and possibly a Nazi war criminal.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
The story of Dinah, a tragic character from the Bible whose great love, a prince, is killed by her brother, leaving her alone and pregnant. The novel traces her life from childhood to death, in the process examining sexual and religious practices of the day, and what it meant to be a woman.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity.

Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
In 1938, on the eve of World War II, a young Chinese man suffering from tuberculosis travels to his family's summer home in Japan, where his encounters with a lovely Japanese girl and four local residents prove to be memorable.

Sea Glass by Anita Shreve
When Honora and Sexton Beecher are rendered penniless by the crash of the stock market, Sexton is forced to work in a nearby mill that is plagued by violence, and as they try to reconstruct their lives, they are confronted by passions of every kind.

Secret History by Donna Tartt
A transfer student from a small town in California, Richard Papen is determined to affect the ways of his Hampden College peers, and he begins his intense studies under the tutelage of eccentric Julian Morrow.

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
When Lily's "stand-in mother" insults the racists in town, Lily knows it's time to leave. They end up being taken in by a trio of black beekeeping sisters who lead her to the single thing her heart longs for most.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
A boy named Daniel selects a novel from a library of rare books, enjoying it so much that he searches for the rest of the author's works, only to discover that someone is destroying every book the author has ever written.

Shipping News by Annie Proulx
An unsuccessful newspaperman, his aunt, and his two young daughters experience delicately evoked changes in a poignant novel set in a Newfoundland fishing town.

Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg
In the course of investigating the suspicious death of a young boy, Smilla Jaspersen discovers a conspiracy involving the country's top scientists and a secret millions of years old.

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
Losing touch with his creative nature by years of lonely political exile, Turkish poet Ka returns to Istanbul to attend his mother's funeral and learns about a series of suicides among pious girls forbidden to wear headscarves, a story that brings him face-to-face with militant Islam, a new romance, and his own atheism.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
San Piedro Island in Puget Sound is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese-American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
An evocative story of friendship set against the backdrop of a nineteenth-century China in which women suffered from foot binding, isolation, and illiteracy follows an elderly woman and her companion as they communicate their hopes, dreams, joys, and tragedies through a unique secret language.

Snow Mountain Passage by James D. Houston
The hardships, tragedy, and devastating starvation that confronted the Donner party, which became trapped by winter snows in the Sierra Nevadas before they can make their way into California, are seen through the eyes of James Frazier Reed and his eight-year-old daughter, Patty.

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
A man fleeing from the repressive social conformity required by China's communist government journeys into the remote mountain regions of southwest China in search of meaning in his life and the elusive Soul Mountain.

The Speed of Light by Elizabeth Rosner
Growing up in a house filled with silence and devoid of emotion, siblings Julian, a scientist who lives a life of seclusion, and Paula, a talented opera singer, must confront and overcome the past when dark secrets resurface.

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz
Izzy Spellman, a twenty-eight-year-old amalgamation of Nancy Drew and Bridget Jones, launches her career as a private investigator while working for the firm of her outlandishly dysfunctional family.

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
In this Pulitzer Prize winning book, Daisy Goodwill attempts to understand her place in the world as she nears the end of her life. She narrates her own biography, from her birth in Manitoba in 1905 when she loses her mother to childbirth, through her college years, her marriages and her work as a newspaper columnist.

Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Spanning both World Wars, this novel is narrated by dwarf Trudi Montag, the town gossip, historian and librarian, who chronicles the lives of the ordinary residents inhabiting small rural town in Germany and the growing impact of the Nazi regime on their lives.

Suite Français by Irène Némirovsky
Published more than sixty years following the author's death at Auschwitz, a remarkable story of life under the Nazi occupation includes two parts--"A Storm in June, " set amid the chaotic 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, and "Dolce," set in a German-occupied provincial village rife with jealousy, resentment, resistance, and collaboration.

That Old Ace In the Hole by Annie Proulx
Assigned to locate land in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma that can be purchased and converted into pig farms for his employer, Bob Dollar meets the residents of Woolybucket and comes to respect their fierce desire to retain their land.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Meet the unforgettable Janie Crawford, an articulate black woman in the 1930s. This story traces Janie's quest for identity, through three marriages, on a journey to her roots.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Achebe's first novel chronicles the life of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community, from the events leading up to his banishment from the community for accidentally killing a clansman, through the seven years of his exile, to his return. The novel addresses the problem of the intrusion in the 1890s of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society. It describes the simultaneous disintegration of its protagonist Okonkwo and of his village. The novel was praised for its intelligent and realistic treatment of tribal beliefs and of psychological disintegration coincident with social unraveling.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Heroic young men carry the emotional weight of their lives to war in Vietnam in a patchwork account of a modern journey into the heart of darkness.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
Mariam and Laila are born a generation apart but are are brought together by war and fate. Together they endure the dangers surrounding them and discover the power of both love and sacrifice.

Three Junes by Julia Glass
Reveals the interconnected lives, loves, and relationships of different generations of the McLeod family over the course of three crucial summers.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A story about a lawyer in a small Alabama town in the l930s whose defense of a Black man arouses the town's prejudice and hostility.

Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle
The lives of two very different couples--wealthy Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, and Candido and America Rincon, a pair of Mexican illegals--suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Armed with her idealism and determination, young Francie Nolan struggles to escape from the poverty of life in a Brooklyn tenement during the early 1900s.

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson
Unemployed actress Olivia Hunt leaves Hollywood to return home at the request of her younger sister, Madeleine, and finds herself struggling to help her sister, keep her parents under control, and reconnect with an old boyfriend.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Interweaves story and dream, past and present, and philosophy and poetry in the sardonic and erotic tale of two couples--Tomas and Teresa, and Sabina and her Swiss lover, Gerhart.

Unless by Carol Shields
Novelist Reta Winter's idyllic life is shattered when her eldest daughter abandons her life to sit on a gritty street corner with a sign reading "GOODNESS" around her neck, a situation that prompts Reta to uncover what drove her daughter to her new existence.

The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
A dark, mysterious tale that weaves the stories of two women in two different centuries into an increasingly complex web-twentieth-century Ella, who dreams in blue when she moves to southwestern France, and sixteenth-century Isabelle, Ella's ancestor, who had been persecuted as a suspected witch.

A Virtuous Woman by Kaye Gibbons
She was the 20 year-old daughter of Carolina gentry. He was a 40 year-old skinny tenant farmer. They didn't fall in love so much as they simply found each other and held on for dear life.

Waiting by Ha Jin
An ambitious and dedicated Chinese doctor, Lin Kong finds himself torn between two very different women--the educated and dynamic nurse with whom he has fallen in love and the traditional, meek, and humble woman to whom his family married him when they were both very young.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope.

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
A family of six disintegrates after a daughter is raped by a high-school student. It happens to the wealthy Mulvaneys in upstate New York. The disgrace--there is some question if it was rape--sends the father to drink and financial ruin, the girl leaves home, the others follow.

The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve
A double narrative set on and around an island off the coast of New Hampshire. A vacationing woman investigates the house and environs where a murder took place more than 100 years ago.

When Madeline Was Young by Jane Hamilton
When Aaron Maciver's beautiful young wife, Madeline, suffers brain damage in a bike accident, she is left with the intellectual powers of a six-year-old. In the years that follow, Aaron and his second wife care for Madeline with deep tenderness and devotion as they raise two children of their own.

When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka
A story told from five different points of view chronicles the experiences of Japanese Americans caught up in the nightmare of the World War II internment camps.

When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
Christopher Banks, an English boy born in early 20th century Shanghai, is orphaned at age nine when both his parents disappear under suspicious circumstances. He grows up to become a renowned detective, and more than 20 years later, returns to Shanghai to solve the mystery of the disappearance.

Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts
A girl, pregnant and seventeen, is abandoned in Oklahoma by her boyfriend. Patching together a new life, she finds a way to help others as they help her.

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller
When an old housemate settles in her small town, the fabric of Jo's life begins to unravel: seduced again by the enticing possibility of another self and another life, she begins a dangerous flirtation that returns her to the darkest moment of her past and imperils all she loves.

White Noise by Don DeLillo
Jack Gladney, a professor of Nazi history at a Middle American liberal arts school, and his family comically try to handle normal family life as a black cloud of lethal gaseous fumes threatens their town.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch
When a woman murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life, her daughter must navigate a new reality--that of a series of foster homes, each its own universe, each with its own limits and dangers.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Set in post-war London, this novel of the racial, political, and social upheaval of the last half-century follows two families--the Joneses and the Iqbals, both outsiders from within the former British empire--as they make their way in modern England.

A Widow for One Year by John Irving
Chronicles the life of a complex, abrasive woman born in the shadow of her siblings' deaths and her parents' adultery, who only finds love after motherhood and widowhood.

Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros
A collection of short stories by the Chicana writer which explores life on both sides of the Mexican border.

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
A man fleeing from the repressive social conformity required by China's communist government journeys into the remote mountain regions of southwest China in search of meaning in his life and the elusive Soul Mountain.

The World Below by Sue Miller
After being diagnosed at nineteen with tuberculosis in 1919, a young woman is sent to a sanitarium, where she rediscovers the pleasures of unfettered youth and falls in love with a doomed man, in a novel that follows the lives of two women of two very different generations.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
Young Anna Frith, a vicar's maid, is faced with the loss of her family, the disintegration of her local community, and a passionate, illicit love as she and her village confront the horrors of the plague, in a historical novel based on real-life events in seventeenth-century England.

A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris
A novel narrated by three women of mixed Native American background: Rayona, Christine and Ida, granddaughter, daughter and mother, set in part in the Pacific Northwest.