Vintage and Anchor Books have designed Reading Group Guides to enhance a group's reading and discussion of a book. They include a description of each book, questions, discussion topics, and author biographies. From fiction to memoir, award winners to bestsellers, we've got books and reading group guides for every interest!

Can't find a Reading Group Guide for your book club's latest selection? To facilitate your meeting, browse our discussion resources for fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry, and you can have lively and engaging discussions no matter which book you choose.

Titles marked with an asterisk (*) below link to our discussion resources.

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O | P | Q-R | S | T | U | V | W |X-Z
  • Abide with Me by E. Lynn Harris
    National Bestseller
    In this sensational conclusion to his popular Invisible Life trilogy, E. Lynn Harris delivers a masterful tale of love friendship, and family as only he can.

  • Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
    The story of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who came to Jefferson in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness.

  • Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
    Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvment in the vicious murders of her employer and his mistress. But as Dr. Simon Jordan, an expert in the field of mental illness, works to uncover the events of that fateful day, he becomes increasing unsure whether he will find a female fiend or a victim of circumstance.

  • Ali and Nino by Kurban Said
    A timelessly epic love story set against the intriguing historical backdrop of pre-WWI Azerbaijan.

  • All Over but the Shoutin' by Rick Bragg
    The moving and powerful memoir by Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in rural Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the state penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The New York Times.

  • All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
    National Book Award Winner
    National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
    Volume I in the Border Trilogy
    Cormac McCarthy tells the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself the last of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With his best friend, he sets off for Mexico on a journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

  • Almost a Woman by Esmeralda Santiago
    Author of When I Was Puerto Rican
    In her poignant coming-of-age tale, Esmeralda Santiago traces her family's journey from Puerto Rico to New York City, revealing her search for balance between being American and Puerto Rican.

  • Altered States by Anita Brookner
    Anita Brookner explores the conflicting needs of men and women and the lack of understanding that divides them. Following the remarriage of his mother, Alan reluctantly becomes engaged to fragile, needy Angela. When Sarah, the object of a previous, destructive affair, reenters his life, Alan embarks on an act of betrayal which will change his life forever.

  • American Pastoral by Philip Roth
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is at once the story of a father and a duaghter and an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order, and domestic bliss.

  • An American Story by Debra J. Dickerson
    A profoundly courageous and insightful memoir, An American Story is Debra J. Dickerson's exceptional account of growing up black in America and struggling to achieve success, self-acceptance, and a sense of racial identity.

  • Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout
    National Bestseller
    Elizabeth Strout's stunning debut novel evokes a teenager's alienation from her distant mother--and a parent's rage at the discovery of her daughter's sexual secrets. A great book for mother/daughter groups!

  • Any Way the Wind Blows by E. Lynn Harris
    NATIONAL BESTSELLER
    Since her wedding to Basil Henderson turned into a washout, Yancey Harrington has reinvented herself as a mega-diva. But when her first single tops the charts, it's a hit with everyone but Basil, who is busy keeping his own secrets out of the public eye.

  • Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson
    Simpson's ambitious first novel traces the difficult childhood and coming-of-age of Ann August, the daughter of a woman whose quest for the American dream moves the two of them from Wisconsin to California and from one odd situation to another.

  • Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
    National Bestseller
    From the internationally acclaimed and Book Prize-winning author of The English Patient, comes this remarkable story about love, family, identity, and the quest to unlock a hidden past. As a forensic pathologist working for a human rights organization, Anil Tissera returns to her native Sri Lanka after fifteen years in the West. Delving into her humanitarian work, she begins to unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearances of dozens of people and the dangerous secrets that the government will do anything to protect.

  • The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present edited by Phillip Lopate
    By presenting more than seventy-five personal essays, including influential forerunners from ancient Greece, Rome, and the Far East, masterpieces from the dawn of the personal essay in the sixteenth century, and a wealth of the finest personal essays from the last four centuries, editor Phillip Lopate, himself an acclaimed essayist, displays the tradition of the personal essay in all its historical grandeur, depth, and diversity.

  • As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
    At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, their wife and mother. Faulkner lets each family member--including Addie--and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life.

  • The Ash Garden* by Dennis Bock
    Dennis Bock's universally acclaimed novel brilliantly describes the bombing of Hiroshima, its aftermath, and the devastating effect it had on three individual lives.
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  • Asylum by Patrick McGrath
    The master of the psychological thriller delivers a nerve-racking yet eerily beautiful work of erotic obsession and madness.

  • Atonement by Ian McEwan
    National Bestseller
    National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
    Ian McEwan's acclaimed bestseller chronicles the events of one summer day in 1935 when a thirteen-year-old girl's misinterpretation of an innocent flirtation sets in motion a disastrous chain of events.

  • Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
    National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
    The award-winning poet Anne Carson reinvents a genre in this stunning work that is both a novel and a poem, both an unconventional re-creation of an ancient Greek myth and a wholly original coming-of-age story set in the present.

  • The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith
    The bestselling author of White Teeth returns with a second acclaimed novel, this time delivering a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity with the story of a boy whose life becomes devoted to the buying and selling of names on paper.

  • Ava's Man by Rick Bragg
    National Bestseller
    Rick Bragg contines his personal history of the Deep South that this time centers around his maternal grandfather. Charlie Bundrum was a complicated man--hotheaded, illiterate, generous, and loving--and in this unforgettable portrait Bragg pays homage to the colorful character who left an indelible mark on his family history.

  • The Avengers by Rich Cohen
    By the author of Tough Jews
    With the same insightfulness that he brought to his acclaimed Tough Jews, Rich Cohen tackles stereotypes about another episode of Jewish history--the Holocaust. In The Avengers, he gives readers an inside look at some of the intrepid individuals who fought against the Nazis, and at the same time tells a remarkable story of resistance and courage.

  • Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt
    By the author of Possession
    A woman's bitter and public divorce from her husband is mirrored by the obscenity trial of the author of a radical fable known as Babbletower.

  • Baghdad Diaries: A Woman's Chronicle of War and Exile* by Nuha al-Radi
    A moving account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq, Iraqi artist Nuha al-Radi's diary offers a rare glimpse at the day-to-day reality of life lived in wartime.
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  • Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie
    National Bestseller
    During China's Cultural Revolution, two young boys are sent to a remote mountain village for reeducation where their only sources of escape are their acquaintance with the daughter of a local tailor and their discovery of a trove of Western literary classics.

  • The Banyan Tree by Christopher Nolan
    This atmospheric novel set in twentieth century rural Ireland is the life story of Minnie O'Brien--a spirited woman who struggles to raise a family and keep her farm intact for future generations. Feisty and colorful, filled with humor and love, The Banyan Tree is a remarkable first novel.

  • The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson
    This clear-eyed, brutal, moving, darkly funny book tells a single story in an immediate, accessible voice--29 "tangos" of narrative verse that take us vividly through erotic, painful, and heartbreaking scenes from a long-time marriage that falls apart.

  • Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
    National Bestseller
    Myla Goldberg's debut novel is a delicately crafted portrait of an American family. When eleven-year-old Eliza Naumann defies everyone's expectations and wins a championship spelling bee, she finds herself launched into the spotlight, radically altering the family dynamics.

  • The Biographer's Tale by A. S. Byatt
    A disillusioned post-graduate student decides to set aside his abstract studies in favor of a more concrete pursuit--the writing of a biography. But he soon discovers that the concept of certainty is an elusive one and that the ideals of truth and art often collide.

  • Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
    #1 International Bestseller
    Spanning three generations, this intensely romantic yet stunningly realistic novel traces the life of young Englishman Stephen Wraysford as he passes through a tempestuous love affair with a married woman and enters the dark, surreal world beneath the trenches of No Man's Land.

  • The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
    International Bestseller
    Winner of the Booker Prize
    A masterful mix of gothic drama, romantic suspense, and science fiction yarn swirls throughout this tale of two sisters--their tragic shared history, and the scandalous novel that binds them together.

  • Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
    By turns comic, satiric, relentless, and terrifying, Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm is an exploration of the lust for power, both sexual and political, and the need for compassion that goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by love.

  • The Body Project by Joan Jacobs Brumberg
    A fascinating history of the shift from the Victorian concern with inner beauty to our modern focus on outward appearance, in which the body--dieted, sculpted, pierced, and frequently agonized over--is now a girl's main project.

  • The Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson
    In this edgy psychological thriller that is as mesmerizing as it is profound, Rupert Thomson fearlessly enters the darkest realm of the human spirit to reveal the sinister connection between sexuality and power.

  • The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
    National Bestseller
    Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for Best First Novel
    In her exquisite first novel, Jane Hamilton confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence, creating a stunning testament to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and love.

  • Bound Feet and Western Dress: A Memoir by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
    A powerful memoir of growing up in China and reconciling that childhood with life in the West.

  • Breaking Clean by Judy Blunt
    National Bestseller
    Judy Blunt's memoir of her hardscrabble life on the prairies of Montana--and the rules and strictures that she eventually had no choice but to flee--is written in prose as big and bold as the landscape.

  • Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
    At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her.

  • The Bridegroom by Ha Jin
    The National Book Award-winning author of Waiting presents a short story collection filled with stories set in contemporary China, and populated with characters struggling to come to terms with their lives at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

  • A Brief History of the Flood by Jean Harfenist
    Lillian Anderson is a strong-minded girl, well-versed in the basics of survival. In these honest and touching interconnected stories, she barrels through adolescence and into adulthood accompanied by her flawed parents, harboring no illusions about her future and learning hard lessons about the fierce love that binds families.

  • The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian
    National Bestseller
    When Terry and Laura Sheldon take in an African American foster child, their hope is to assuage the pain of losing their twin daughters in a flash flood two years earlier. But as Alfred struggles to adjust, the Sheldons must confront another unexpected threat to their marriage--one that could destroy their family bond for good.

  • Burning Marguerite by Elizabeth Inness-Brown
    One winter morning James Jack Wright finds ninety-four-year-old Marguerite Deo--the woman he has always known as "Tante"--lying dead in the woods outside his cabin. As he sets out to fulfill her last wishes, secrets of their pasts are revealed, from an illicit passion to an unforgivable crime, and the bond that formed between a small boy and a reclusive woman.

  • By the Lake by John McGahern
    John McGahern guides readers into a rural village in Ireland and deftly, compassionately traces the natural rhythms and inner lives of its people over the course of one year.

  • The Cadence of Grass by Thomas McGuane
    Sunny Jim Whitelaw may have died, but that doesn't mean he has any intention of relinquishing control of the large bottling plant he built in Montana; his will specifies that no one gets a cent unless his daughter reconciles with her estranged husband. The family feud that ensues is as big as the backdrop of the American West, and McGuane's writing reaffirms his place as one of our finest writers.

  • Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
    Traveling back to the city of her youth for a retrospective of her art, Elaine Risley finds herself engulfed by images of the past which force her to confront the woman she has become. Considered her most autobiographical work, Cat's Eye stands as a prime example of Atwood's talent as a master storyteller.

  • Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks
    From the bestselling author of Birdsong comes the remarkable story of a young Scottish woman who joins the effort to liberate France from the Nazis, while pursuing a perilous mission of her own.

  • Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
    Author of All the Pretty Horses
    The concluding volume of McCarthy's acclaimed Border Trilogy, and a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier.

  • A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr
    #1 National Bestseller
    National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for Nonfiction
    A handful of working class parents whose children are dying of leukemia challenges two of the largest corporations in America in this overpowering courtroom drama.

  • Claire Marvel* by John Burnham Schwartz
    From the moment they meet in the middle of a rainstorm, Julian Rose and Claire Marvel share a deep, all-consuming passion. As their tumultuous love affair winds along its course, Schwartz exposes the pain and heartache of modern day romance with spare, elegant prose.
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  • The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
    #1 International Bestseller
    Rare-book sleuth Lucas Corso is hired to authenticate a manuscript chapter of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, only to find himself in unexpectedly dangerous waters as he becomes the target of devil worshipers and unscrupulous bibliophiles.

  • Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
    National Book Award Winner
    National Bestseller
    One of the most acclaimed novels in recent memory, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is a masterpiece that is at once an enthralling adventure, a stirring love story, and a luminous evocation of a vanished America in all its savagery, solitude, and splendor.

  • The Colony of Unrequited Dreams by Wayne Johnston
    A tragicomic elegy, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston's masterful tribute to a people and a place establishes him as a novelist who is as profound as he is funny, with an impeccable sense of the intersection where private lives and history collide.

  • Colors of the Mountain by Da Chen
    In an inspirational memoir, Da Chen recounts his boyhood growing up in China during Mao Zhedong's Cultural Revolution. Despite this background of extreme poverty and danger, Chen shares a life full of struggle, humiliation, and ultimately triumphant resillience.

  • Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
    National Bestseller
    Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Horwitz ushers readers thought a South where the Civil War is still being fought--in court rooms and classrooms, as well as on historic battlefields--offering unique and often hilarious insights into the culture of the region.

  • Confess, Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald
    Edgar Award Winner
    Fletch finds himself the prime suspect in a murder investigation when a girl turns up dead in the living room of his borrowed Boston apartment. And this time Fletch may just have met his match--Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn, star of Mcdonald's Flynn series, makes his debut here hot on Fletch's trail.

  • Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières
    A story of love, friendship and music unfolds on the magical Greek island of Cepphalonia during the time of its occupation by Mussolini's army.

  • The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
    Volume II in the Border Trilogy
    In this mesmerizing novel, Cormac McCarthy lays bare the mythic skeleton of the American West, telling the story of a ruinous quest for a dubious grail, undertaken by a hero who only guesses what he is looking for and is cruelly diminished by what he finds.

  • The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
    In a powerful novel about a young girl's coming-of-age in rural Canada during the Second World War, Gail Anderson-Dargatz proves herself to be a extraordinary interpreter of the interplay between myth and reality, the land and its inhabitants, the forces of nature and those of the human heart.

  • Daisy Bates in the Desert by Julia Blackburn
    Daisy Bates, an eccentric and passionate Englishwoman, leaves her family to live among the Australian aborigines for almost thirty years.

  • Dancing After Hours by Andre Dubus
    Andre Dubus shows readers ordinary men and women coming to terms with injury and loneliness, the lack of love and the terror of actually finding it, in tales that are every bit as poignant and mysterious as those of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor.

  • The Dark Room* by Rachel Seiffert
    Drawing on the fictional stories of three separate individuals--from the onset of World War II to the present--Rachel Seiffert's internationally acclaimed debut probes the modern German psyche by analyzing the effects of war from a personal perspective.
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  • Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean
    Sister Helen Prejean recounts her correspondence and friendship with Patrick Sonnier, a death row inmate and killer of two teenagers and brings up questions about the death penalty.

  • Dear Exile by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
    A funny and moving story told through the letters of two women nurturing a friendship as they are separated by distance, experience, and time.

  • The Dearly Departed by Elinor Lipman
    Elinor Lipman is back with another delightful novel about family secrets and unlikely alliances. This time she tells the story of Sunny Batten, now a big-city girl who is forced by the untimely death of her mother to once again confront the small town community of her unhappy adolescence, learning in the process that sometimes going home again can be anything but what you expect.

  • Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill
    National Bestseller
    The third book in Thomas Cahill's The Hinges of History series takes an in-depth and engaging look at the life and times of Jesus--the obscure rabbi who came to be the central figure in Western civilization.

  • The Diagnosis by Alan Lightman
    National Book Award Finalist
    The acclaimed, bestselling author of Einstein's Dreams presents another startling meditation on science and life--the harrowing tale of one man's struggle to cope in a wired world as his own biological wiring short-circuits.

  • The Diary of an American Au Pair by Marjorie Leet Ford
    After losing her job in San Francisco and calling off her wedding, Melissa heads across the Atlantic to a new job as au pair to the family of a Member of Parliament. When the realities of her life fall far short of her expectations, she addresses the situation with humor and grace, learning more than she imagined in the process.

  • Disobedience by Jane Hamilton
    National Bestseller
    When seventeen-year-old Henry Shaw discovers his mother is having an affair, his sense of family and his sense of self are turned inside out. Part coming-of-age story, part meditation on the comflicting demands of romantic intensity and familial security, Disobedience is a fresh and honest look at the lessons of love and family.

  • The Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer
    National Bestseller
    A midwestern girl finds herself questioning her life when her fiancé is paralyzed in a diving accident. Daring to ask the question of how much we owe the people we love, Packer's novel is filled with exacting realism and moral complexity.

  • The Dying Animal by Philip Roth
    For years an aging college professor has made a practice of casually sleeping with his young female students, but when one woman breaks through his emotional barrier it triggers a downward spiral of sexual jealousy and loss.

  • The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
    Rich in metaphor, deliciously comic, and glittering with insight, The Edible Woman chronicles the fantastic and dramatic ego disintegration of Marian McAlprin, a perfectly conventional young woman whose impending engagement, and her subsequent pursuit of "every woman's dream," throws her life into turmoil.

  • Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
    Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop, named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." But as these letters start to drop off a memorial statue, Ella finds herself acting to save her friends from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island's council.

  • Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
    National Bestseller
    In this extraordinary self-portrait, a young girl survives eleven years of threats and abuse from her drunken father only to be orphaned, yet she never gives up her hope of finding a place for herself in the world.

  • Embers by Sándor Márai
    International Bestseller
    In a secluded woodland castle, an old General has waited forty-one years to confront his closest friend, and over the course of one evening they will wage a war of words in a desperate search for truth and understanding. Sándor Márai's rediscovered masterpiece is a magnificent tapestry--elegant, suspenseful, and full of understated power.

  • The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
    #1 National Bestseller
    In his triumphant fiction debut, Stephen L. Carter combines a riveting novel of suspense with the unique saga of an African American family when the patriarch is found dead under suspicious circumstances and his son must risk everything to uncover the truth.

  • Encore Provence by Peter Mayle
    National Bestseller
    In his most delightful foray into the wonders of Provençal life, Peter Mayle returns to France to give us a glimpse into everything from the secrets of the truffle trade to a small-town murder mystery that reads like great fiction.

  • Empire Falls by Richard Russo
    National Bestseller
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    A beloved and compelling storyteller cements his reputation with Empire Falls--an unforgettable portrait of one man's struggle to survive the joy and heartache of small-town life while dealing with his dead-end job, teenage daughter, soon-to-be ex-wife, and the formidable widow who controls what's left of the town's struggling economy.

  • English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
    Booker Prize Finalist
    Whitbread Award Winner
    Kneale's grim but hilarious historical novel is a rip-roaring tale about the extinction of the Tasmanians that vivdly brings a past age to life.

  • The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
    #1 New York Times Bestseller
    Booker Prize Winner
    In an abandoned Tuscan villa during the last days of war in 1945, four people are brought together and held in place by the riddle of the hideously burned man known only as "the English patient."

  • An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
    The author of the international bestseller A Suitable Boy returns with a powerful and deeply romantic tale of two gifted musicians who are unexpectedly reunited after ten years apart.

  • Evening by Susan Minot
    National Bestseller
    As she lays dying, Ann Lord recalls a long-ago wedding weekend when she fell in love with a passion that remains, after three marriages and five children, the defining event and emotion of her life.

  • Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell
    Internationally bestselling mystery writer Henning Mankell delivers a mesmerizing suspense novel in which detective Kurt Wallander must solve a seemingly senseless crime before it escalates into a racial crisis.

  • Family by J. California Cooper
    A stunning and graphic recreation of the realities of slavery, Family is the story of a mother whose loving spirit, even in death, watches over her children as they navigate the world.

  • The Family Orchard by Nomi Eve
    A magical novel combining Jewish mysticism and the style of traditional folktales to chronicle almost two hundred years in the life of an extraordinary and eccentric family.

  • The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
    National Book Award Finalist
    Unable to sleep, Charles Baxter ventures out into the moonlit summer night and finds the love stories that make up this enchanted novel. The characters he encounters and the tales they relate--some tragic, some hopeful-- amount to a delightful glimpse of the marvelous adventure of love.

  • A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
    With the compassionate realism of Dickens and a narrative sweep worthy of Balzac, this internationally acclaimed novel draws an unforgettable portrait of the cruelty and corruption, kindness and heroism of India. Set in 1975, A Fine Balance follows the destinies of four strangers who are forced to share a cramped apartment in an unnamed city by the sea.

  • The First American by H. W. Brands
    Pulitzer Prize Finalist
    The first major biography of Benjamin Franklin in more than sixty years, The First American is history on a grand scale--a work of meticulous scholarship and a thoroughly engaging portrait of the foremost American of his day.

  • The First Man by Albert Camus
    Camus's incomplete and brilliant manuscript, found in the wreckage of his fatal car crash, is both a compelling novel of childhood and an epic narrative of his beloved homeland Algeria.

  • Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald
    Edgar Award Winner
    The first in a series of nine novels, Gregory Mcdonald's Edgar Award-winning Fletch introduces one of the best-known and most popular figures in crime fiction--an investigative journalist named I. M. Fletcher who is approached by a multi-millionaire to murder him.

  • Fletch's Fortune by Gregory Mcdonald
    Fletch's past seems to have caught up with him, and now the C.I.A. has blackmailed him into bugging his fellow journalists at a convention. But when a newspaper tycoon is murdered, Fletch finds he can use the Feds' equipment to his own advantage.

  • Flights of Love: Stories by Bernhard Schlink
    The internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of The Reader brings sleek concision and moral acuity to seven tales of modern men suspended between the desire for love and the impulse toward flight.

  • Flirting with Danger by Siobhan Darrow
    Former star CNN correspondent Siobhan Darrow recounts with honesty and courage a life marked by personal risk and professional success on the long road to self-acceptance and inner happiness.

  • Flux by Peggy Orenstein
    From the author of Schoolgirls comes this engaging and illuminating look at the concept of womanhood at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

  • Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over by Geraldine Brooks

  • For the Relief of Unbearable Urges by Nathan Englander
    With remarkable deftness, humor, and wisdom, Nathan Englander illuminates the dilemmas of his characters as they struggle with marital difficulty, obsession, desire, and spiritual crisis. The result is a collection of unforgettable modern fables that transcend the particularities of time and place.

  • The Forgetting: Alzheimer's: Portrait of an Epidemic by David Shenk
    National Bestseller
    Affecting nearly half of all persons over the age of eighty-five, Alzheimer's is increasingly at the forefront for the world's aging population. David Shenk's engaging account of the history of this disease and the future possibilities of a cure is a powerful tool for family members and health care professionals alike.

  • Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis
    National Bestseller
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    In a landmark work of history, the National Book Award-winning author of American Sphinx explores how a group of greatly gifted but deeply flawed men--Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams, and Madison--set the course for our nation.

  • Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
    Winner of the Lannan Literary Fiction Award
    When seven-year-old Jakob Beer's family is taken from him by the Nazis, he flees and is miraculously rescued by a Greek geologist, who smuggles Jakob to his native island of Zakynthos to start him on a new life.

  • The Future Has a Past by J. California Cooper
    A testament to a master storyteller in the full blossom of her talents, the stories in The Future Has a Past recreate the lives of ordinary women as they discover that love often comes when you least expect it and that life isn't always what it seems.

  • The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson
    The bestselling author of Consilience, and one of our most important scientists, assesses the precarious state of our environment and the mass extinctions occurring in our time. Yet, rather than espousing doomsday prophesies, he spells out a specific plan to save our world while there is still time.

  • Gabriel's Story by David Anthony Durham
    A marvelous coming-of-age story in the American West, David Anthony Durham's novel traces the adventures of Gabriel Lynch, a young African American who escapes the harsh realities of prairie life by joining up with a motley--and ultimately dangerous--crew bound for Texas.

  • Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
    National Book Award Finalist
    Katherine Dunn's bizarrely riveting novel about a carny family who sets out to breed their own human oddities challenges our preconceived notions of normalcy and beauty. Family values will never be the same.

  • The Gifts of the Jews by Thomas Cahill
    National Bestseller
    This second book in Thomas Cahill's The Hinges of History series investigates the ways in which our Jewish ancestors shaped the ways we think and live. From the possibility of faith in a single God to principles of individual destiny and social justice, Cahill demonstrates the value of revering the past while looking toward the future.

  • The Girl at the Lion d'Or by Sebastian Faulks
    Author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray
    From the bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray comes a haunting historical novel of passion, loss, and courage, set in France between the two worls wars. The Vintage edition marks its first appearance in the United States.

  • Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
    In a book that is both provocative and humorous, Susanna Kaysen recounts her two years' sojourn in a Boston psychiatric hospital, challenging the conventional distinction between "madness" and "sanity."

  • God: A Biography by Jack Miles
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    In a book that has been praised for its audacity as wells as its erudtion, former Jesuit Jack Miles sets out to interpret the unimaginably powerful and disturbingly contradictory figure of God as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible.

  • Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian
    When Gob Woohdull's twin brother is killed in battle during the Civil War, his guilt and grief drive him to an unorthodox obsession with uncertain results--the building of a machine that will bring his brother and all the other fallen soldiers back to life.

  • Goodnight, Nebraska by Tom McNeal
    Tom McNeal explores the currents of hope, passion, and cruelty beneath the surface of the American heartland in his tale of an outcast whose redemption lies in a strange, small, but ultimately embracing community.

  • The Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen
    Thisbe Nissen's poignant yet funny debut novel is a modern fairy tale--the story of Roz Rosenzweig and Edwin Anderson, an unlikely couple who fall in love and build a life in in New York City, discovering along the way that amidst all the humor and heartache good things do thrive in New York.

  • Half a Life by V. S. Naipaul
    National Bestseller
    Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul's Half a Life is a masterful study of identity. As the son of a Brahmin ascetic and a lower-caste woman, Willie senses the tension between his parents at an early age and spends his life in search of something more genuine, yet eventually finds himself compelled to commit a betrayal that threatens his desperately sought happiness.

  • The Hand I Fan With by Tina McElroy Ansa
    Tired of shouldering the town's problems and wanting to find a little love and companionship for herself, Lena McPherson conjures up the perfect man--a ghost whose love changes her life forever.

  • The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
    Based on actual events, The Handmaid's Tale is a chilling story of a totalitarian theocracy in post-Revolutionary War Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a class of women has been forced to produce babies for elite barren couples.

  • Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories* by Alice Munro
    National Bestseller
    Short story master Alice Munro achieves new heights in this tenth collection--her first since the award-winning, bestselling The Love of a Good Woman. Here are complicated and contradictory true-to-life characters, making life-changing discoveries and surprising themselves and others in unexpected ways.
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  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
    National Bestseller
    Dave Eggers' phenomenal debut is a memoir that redefines family and narrative for the twenty-first century.The result is an exhilarating combination of heart-wrenching drama and amusing anecdotes that celebrates the most universal truths of love, friendship, and family.

  • The Heartsong of Charging Elk by James Welch
    When Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux Indian, is accidentally left behind in Marseilles by Buffalo Bill's Wild West traveling show, he is forced to establish a life in a strange land. Providing a unique and rare portrait of the American Indian, The Heartsong of Charging Elk is a classic story of the conflict between cultural and individual identity.

  • Her* by Laura Zigman
    Elise meets Donald on a flight to Washington, D.C., and it's love at first sight. Before Elise knows it they're discussing wedding invitations and everything is going well until she meets her--Donald's stunning ex-fiancée. Convinced Adrienne is out to win Donald back, Elise begins stalking them...with hilarious results.
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  • Hidden Power* by Kati Marton
    In a behind-the-scenes look at twelve presidential marriages, Kati Marton uncovers the dynamics of these ultimate power couples, exposing the remarkable influence first ladies have had on virtually every aspct of government.
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  • The Hidden Writer by Alexandra Johnson
    Presenting seven portraits of literary and creative lives, Alexandra Johnson illuminates the secret world of writers and their diaries, and shows how over generations these writers have used the diary to solve a common set of creative and life questions.

  • Highwire Moon by Susan Straight
    National Book Award Finalist
    Serafina is illegal migrant worker living in California when she is unexpectedly sent back to Mexico--without her three-year-old daughter Elvia. Twelve years later mother and daughter simultaneously embark on harrowing journeys to find one another, spurred on by their memories of one another and the hope to reconnect as a family.

  • Hitler's Willing Executioners by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
    National Bestseller
    A groundbreaking work challenges one of the most persistent myths about the Holocaust: that most Germans were either ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews or participated in it reluctantly.

  • Honky by Dalton Conley
    Dalton Conley's account of growing up white in the predominantly black and Latino projects of New York's Lower East side is an eye-opening assessment of race and class in contemporary America.

  • A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
    Hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels, A House for Mr. Biswas is the unforgettable story of one man's fight for personal independence set against the backdrop of a country's postcolonial struggle.

  • House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
    National Book Award Nominee
    In this devastating exploration of the American Dream gone awry, three fragile yet determined people come dangerously entangled in a relentlessly escalating crisis.

  • Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
    Booker Prize Winner
    An astute and idealistic English romance novelist goes to a quiet Swiss hotel to escape a failed love affair and to reflect on her life.

  • The House of Niccolò by Dorothy Dunnett
    Niccolò Rising, The Spring of the Ram, Race of Scorpions, Scales of Gold, The Unicorn Hunt, To Lie with Lions, Caprice and Rondo, Gemini.
    Set throughout the fifteenth-century, this series centers on the life of Nicholas de Fleury, a street smart, brilliant man, adept at the subtleties of diplomacy and the well-timed untruth. Throughout the course of eight meticulously crafted novels, readers are guided along a breathless adventure as this predecesor of Francis Crawford of Lymond builds the legacy upon which Dorothy Dunnett's acclaimed series the Lymond Chronicles is based.

  • How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
    National Bestseller
    This first book in Thomas Cahill's The Hinges of History series tells the story of how an isolated island, too small and barbaric for the Romans to bother with, played a heroic role in saving Western literature and shaped the course of human civilization.

  • The Human Stain by Philip Roth
    National Bestseller
    PEN/Faulkner Award Winner and New York Times Editors' Choice
    In the conclusion to his American trilogy, Philip Roth provocatively explores the issue of race in American society at the end of the twentieth century. Accused of racism by his colleages, an eminent classics professor finds his life begin to unravel as he struggles to keep hidden the most dangerous secret of all.

  • I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Pastoral
    I Married a Communist is the story of the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, a big American roughneck who begins life as a teenage ditch-digger in 1930s Newark, becomes a big-time 1940s radio star, and is destroyed, as both a performer and a man, in the McCarthy witchhunt of the 1950s.

  • I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn
    National Bestseller
    Jane Mendelsohn continues the story of Amelia Earhart's legendary final flight in a brilliantly imagined novel that is a tour de force of narrative ventriloquism--gripping, poetic, and romantic in the best sense of the word.

  • In a Dark Wood by Amanda Craig
    When recently divorced, unemployed actor Benedick Hunter comes across a children's book of fairy tales written by his deceased mother, it opens the door to unlocking the secrets of his past and changing the course of his uncertain future.

  • In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent
    National Bestseller
    In the last days of the Civil War, a northern soldier and an escaped slave find love and begin a new life for themselves in Vermont. But the lingering scars of slavery result in tragedy, and a chain of events is set in motion that cuts to the very core of a family's secret history and a country's troubling past.

  • In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdyke
    A story of human survival and triumph, Irene Gut Opdyke's memoir of rescuing Jews in Poland during the Holocaust is a powerful addition to the genre.

  • In the Pond by Ha Jin
    From the National Book Award-winning author of Waiting, comes this engaging story of a chinese factory worker, and amateur calligrapher, who learns to wield his artist's brush with far-reaching social and political consequences.

  • In Search of Satisfaction by J. California Cooper
    Cooper blends the traditional style of folk narratives with a deep moral sensibility in this generational saga of three families struggling to survive in the years following the Civil War.

  • Independence Day by Richard Ford
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    A middle-aged divorced man on a weekend trip with his son embarks on a transforming spiritual journey to take a fresh view on life.

  • The Information by Martin Amis
    In this blackly comic story, a fortyish unsuccessful writer is consumed with jealousy over his friend's success and is desperate to "get even"--whether it be by career sabotage, sexual betrayal, or violence.

  • The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman
    Wonderfully readable, refreshing, and witty, this is the perfect intelligent romantic comedy--from an author beloved by readers, booksellers, and critics.

  • Inspired Sleep by Robert Cohen
    Award-winning author of the acclaimed novels The Organ Builder and The Here and Now, Robert Cohen presents a wildly entertaining work of fiction that is also a provocative indictment of our over-medicated society.

  • Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris
    In this first novel in the Invisible Life trilogy, E. Lynn Harris introduces us to one young man as he embarks on a journey of emotional and sexual discovery.

  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
    In a pioneering work of African American fiction, Ralph Ellison sends his naive hero through almost every social stratum to address the complex components of racism in America.

  • Island: The Complete Stories by Alistair MacLeod
    In sixteen elegantly crafted stories, the acclaimed author of No Great Mischief returns to themes of the importance of the tradition and the beauty of the landscape as he traces the fictional lives of people who inhabit his beloved Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

  • An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser
    When Laura Fraser's husband of one year leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she embarks on an impulsive trip to Italy to soothe her broken heart. What she doesn't expect is the mysterious and passionate affair that helps her along the emotional journey to restored self-esteem and zest for life.

  • Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
    London, 1837. Jack Maggs, a foundling trained as a thief, betrayed and deported to a penal colony in Australia, has reversed his fortunes. Under threat of execution he returns to London after twenty years of exile to seek vengeance and reconciliation.

  • John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
    Pulitzer Prize Finalist
    National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
    On one level the retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him, Colson Whitehead's acclaimed novel is also the story of a disaffected black journalist who attends an annual festival in honor of the historical figure. Weaving the two storylines, this remarkable novel vividly exposes the dark side of the modern digital and information age.

  • The Journey Home by Olaf Olafsson
    A graceful and lyrical novel, The Journey Home is the story of one woman's brave confrontation with her past after discovering she has one month to live.

  • Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
    National Bestseller
    From the author of Invisible Man comes an evocative and powerful tale of ambition, racism, and the unbreakable bonds between men.

  • Just As I Am by E. Lynn Harris
    National Bestseller
    The second novel in Harris's Invisible Life trilogy continues the story of Raymond Tyler as he continues to struggle to accept his sexual orientation, when the courage of a close friend dying of AIDS helps him to re-examine his own life.

  • The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara by David Kertzer
    The fascinating story of a Jewish boy whose kidnapping had powerful consequences for the future of both the Italian nation and the Catholic Church.

  • The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
    In this nightmarish and exhilirating novel, deputy sheriff Lou Ford experiences a recurrence of "the sickness" that triggered a crime in his youth. But this time the sickness is worse, resulting in a series of sadistic murders.

  • The Ladies' Man by Elinor Lipman
    From the author of The Inn at Lake Devine comes another delicious novel filled with wit and social mischief. Thirty years after jilting Adele Dobbin at the alter, Harvey Nash waltzes back into her life filled with regret (sort of) and hoping for another chance.

  • Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood
    Unable to juggle her crumbling marriage, her madcap affair with an unpredictable performance artist, and her feud with an insidious celebrity blackmailer, Joan Foster feigns her own death and flees to Italy, determined to start again incognito, but she soon finds that the invisibility that once plagued her is now impossible to regain.

  • Lake Effect* by Rich Cohen
    Rich Cohen's memoir of growing up in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago is a bittersweet coming-of-age story that bores to the essence of friendship.
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  • Last Orders by Graham Swift
    Booker Prize Winner
    Four friends traveling through England together on a trip to scatter the ashes of one man's late father reveal over the course of their journey their connective web of love, animosities, secrets, and lies.

  • The Law of Similars by Chris Bohjalian
    Author of Midwives
    Prosecutor Leland Fowler is faced with an ethical dilemma of enormous proportions when one of this lover's patients falls into an allergy-induced coma, possibly due to the homeopathic remedy she prescribed.

  • A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
    National Bestseller
    National Book Critic Circle Award Winner
    In this poignant novel, Ernest J. Gaines demonstrates the ways in which people stubbornly declare the value of their lives in a time and place where those lives seemingly count for nothing, and where the imprisoned may find freedom even in the moment of their death.

  • Lie in the Dark by Dan Fesperman
    Lie in the Dark is a haunting detective novel set in war-torn Sarajevo. Written by a journalist who covered Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia during the conflicts that followed the fall of Communism in Yugoslavia, it is at once gripping fiction and vivid eyewitness history.

  • Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood
    In a masterful novel that reveals the strata of humor and pathos that make up modern familial and romantic love, Margaret Atwood tells the story of a decaying marriage and the ensuing struggle that redefines a family.

  • Life Estates by Shelby Hearon
    Best friends Sarah and Harriet, who have always believed that they live parallel lives, are forced to reexamine their relationship when they start heading in drastically different directions after the deaths of their husbands.

  • Light Years by James Salter
    James Salter traces the marriage of an affluent couple through times of contentment, disillusionment, and divorce and, as Viri and Nedra Berland set out in very different directions, offers a unique and compassionate aesthetic of life and relationships.

  • Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography* by William Lee Miller
    A fresh and engaging telling of the story of Lincon's rise to power, Lincoln's Virtues is a major contribution to the discussion of the relationship between politics and ethics.
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  • Living a Life That Matters by Harold S. Kushner
    National Bestseller
    Following his sensational bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Kushner delivers a book with incredible relevance for our times. Whether advising on the pursuit of justice without succumbing to the lure of revenge or suggesting ways in which we can build a stronger sense of community, his encouragement and guidance will appeal to anyone who seeks meaning in the chaos of modern life.

  • Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
    When the aging émigré Humbert Humbert falls in love with the precocious twelve-year-old nymphet Dolores Haze, all the rules--of desire, decency, and literature--are broken.

  • The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
    Detective Philip Marlowe takes on a case involving a war scarred drunk and his promiscuous wife in this sixth novel inthe Philip Marlowe series.

  • Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
    National Book Award Finalist
    When fashion model Charlotte Swenson is injured in a car accident that shatters her face, she returns to New York a virtual stranger to her old life. Weaving Charlotte's story with those of other casualties of the modern day infatuation with image, Look at Me becomes a coolly mesmerizing thriller of identity and imposture.

  • Lost Boys by James Garbarino, Ph. D.
    James Garbarino's powerful look at teen violence and what we can do to stop it is one of the most important and original books ever written about boys.

  • The Lost Father by Mona Simpson
    Simpson continues the story of Ann August, now a twenty-eight-year-old medical student, as she gives in to her lifelong desire to find her father, feeling that her life can't continue meaningfully until she discovers why he left her without a word.

  • Love Among the Ruins by Robert Clark
    Robert Clark's novel of young love in the turbulent '60s combines remarkable storytelling power with an intimate sense of time and place. William and Emily fall in love in the summer of 1968 amidst growing political unrest and the confusion of their own adolescence, but when they decide to run away together the tragic consequences cast a permanent shadow over the lives of everyone around them.

  • Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom
    National Book Award finalist Amy Bloom delivers a sharp and funny tale of growing up, demonstrating how profoundly the forces of love shape our lives.

  • The Love of a Good Woman by Alice Munro
    Author of Open Secrets
    National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
    In perhaps her boldest collection to date, Alice Munro evokes with almost clairvoyant assurance the vagaries of love, the tension and deceit that lie in wait under the polite surfaces of society, and the strange, often comical desires of the human heart.

  • A Love of My Own* by E. Lynn Harris
    National Bestseller
    When Zola Denise Norwood meets a media mogul on a New York-bound flight, he makes her several offers before they even land. Now she's realizing her dream of editing an urban magazine, but can she keep her relationship with the company's CEO purely professional?
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  • Lying Awake by Mark Salzman
    National Bestseller
    From the bestselling author of Iron & Silk comes a finely wrought novel that plumbs the depths of the human soul and questions the power--and price--of faith.

  • The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett
    The Game Of Kings, Queens' Play, The Disorderly Knight, A Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle, Checkmate.
    Set throughout sixteenth-century Europe and the Near East, the series has as its hero Francis Crawford of Lymond, a nobleman and soldier of fortune possessed of a scholar's erudition, an elastic sense of morals, and the tongue of a poet. In the course of six novels, Dorothy Dunnett takes this compelling figure on a perilous and colorful tour through the glittering courts and power centers of sixteenth-century Europe, revealing the narrative mastery, in-depth human portraiture, and uncanny ability to reanimate the past that have earned her the unofficial title of the world's "finest living writer of historical fiction."

  • The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
    Sam Spade, a slightly shop-worn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, stars in Hammett's masterpiece, a novel that has haunted two generations of readers.

  • The Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
    In a stunning novel that was a finalist for the Booker Prize, Ahdaf Soueif combines the romantic skill of nineteenth-century novelists with a very modern sense of culture and politics--both sexual and international.

  • A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton
    National Bestseller
    From the author of the widely acclaimed The Book of Ruth comes a harrowing, heartbreaking drama about a rural American family and a disastrous event that forever changes their lives.

  • Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser
    National Bestseller
    From one of our finest biographers, Marie Antoinette is a lavish and engaging portrait of France's beleaguered queen, immersing the reader not only in the coming-of-age of a graceful woman, but also in the distinct culture of an era.

  • The Mark of the Angel by Nancy Huston
    International Bestseller
    This stunning American debut novel is a haunting and unforgettable tale of love, longing, fate, and the inescapable weight of history.

  • Martha Peake: A Novel of the American Revolution by Patrick McGrath
    When Ambrose Tree is summoned to the bedside of his dying uncle, he has no idea that instead of collecting a sizable inheritance he is about to be drawn into a dramatic story in which he himself will play a crucial role. Mixing Gothic mystery and historical romance, Patrick McGrath's tale hurtles toward a powerful climax.

  • Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    Set in turn-of-the-century New York City, Steven Millhauser's quintessentially American tale of ambition, talent, and luck traces the life of Martin Dressler, a cigar maker's son with the ability--and audacity--to make his wildest dreams come true.

  • The Master of Rain: A Novel of Shanghai* by Tom Bradby
    Richard Field, newly appointed to the international police, is called to investigate the murder of a prostitute, and quickly finds himself submerged in the dark seedy underworld of 1926 Shanghai. The searing story that unfolds will test his wits and propel him toward a dangerous confrontation with the city's most ruthless gangster.
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  • The Matter is Life by J. California Cooper
    This collection of gritty, modern day folktales is told in a richly lyrical and colloquial style. Without condescension or sentimentality, Cooper focuses on the lives of abused and downtrodden women fighting against incredible odds.

  • Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
    National Bestseller
    Sayuri's story begins in 1929, when she is taken from her home in a fishing village and sold into slavery, becoming servant and apprentice to a renowned geisha house. But when World War II erupts, the geisha houses are forced to close, and Sayuri must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms.

  • Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson
    Reinventing figures as diverse as Oedipus and Emily Dickinson, Carson sets up startling juxtapositions: Lazarus among video paraphernalia, Virginia Woolf and Thucydides discussing war, and in so doing shows us a fiercely individual poet at her best.

  • Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
    John Berendt's classic tale of murder and intrigue in Savannah is the longest-running bestseller in history. Coming to paperback at last!

  • Midwives by Chris Bohjalian
    On an icy winter night in an isolated house in rural Vermont, a seasoned midwife named Sibyl Danforth takes desperate measures to save a baby's life. She performs an emergency cesarean section on a mother she believes has died of a stroke. But what if Sibyl's patient wasn't dead--and Sibyl inadvertently killed her?

  • The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
    In the opening lines of this high-spirited, inexhaustibly inventive novel, Edgar Mint announces that when he was seven years old, his head was run over by a mail truck. Edgar survives not only this but many other unfortunate incidents, persisting in his own innate goodness and in his determination to find and forgive the man who almost killed him.

  • Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood by Naomi Wolf
    Veteran cultural warrior and author of the bestselling Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf combines passionate critique and unrelenting honesty to take on the reality of contemporary maternity through the lens of her own experiences.

  • The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
    Rushdie gives a fabulous and philosophic vision of his native India, a panorama condensed within the story of one brilliant, ruined family and its last surviving member.

  • Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
    Precious Ramotswe, founder of Botswana's detective agency for the "concerns of both ladies and others" finds herself investigating the alleged poisoning of an important government man as well as the moral character of the four finalists of the Miss Beauty and Integrity contest.

  • MotherKind by Jayne Anne Phillips
    The celebrated author of Shelter and Machine Dreams brings her characteristically brilliant analysis of the lives of women in contemporary America to MotherKind, the story of one woman who finds herself struggling to adjust to the simultaneous roles of mother to her new baby, stepmother to two new sons, and caregiver to her own ailing parent.

  • Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
    National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
    Lionel Essrog, whose Tourette's syndrome drives him to rip apart language in startlingly curious ways, is an orphan working for a small-time Brooklyn mobster. With this virtuosic riff on the classic detective novel, Jonthan Lethem has once again proven himself as America's most inventive novelist.

  • A Multitude of Sins* by Richard Ford
    National Bestseller
    In this masterful collection of short stories, one of our most celebrated chroniclers of modern life explores the grand themes of intimacy and love and the human failures at each.
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  • My Ántonia by Willa Cather
    A young Nebraskan tells the story of his unconsummated love affair with the fascinating Antonia, a Bohemian immigrant to his small prairie town.

  • My Life, Starring Dara Falcon by Ann Beattie
    Ann Beattie explores the obsessive side of female friendship and traces the events that impel one woman out of the cocoon of her marriage and into independence, but also into a web of moral uncertainty and self-questioning.

  • My Name is Red* by Orhan Pamuk
    National Bestseller
    Part mystery, part love story, and part symposium on the power of art, My Name is Red is the story of a group of acclaimed artists, commissioned by the sultan to create a book celebrating the glories of his realm. But when one artist disappears, the onyl clue to the mystery--or crime--is in the unfinished illuminations themselves.
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  • My Own Country by Abraham Verghese
    A young Indian doctor tells the story of the four years he spent working as a specialist in infectious diseases in a small, sheltered Southern town that was forced, to the disbelief of the community, to learn to deal with the growing presence of AIDS among its inhabitants.

  • Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word by Randall Kennedy
    National Bestseller
    With a new introduction and afterword, this candid and intelligent book traces the origins and connotations of a key term in the lexicon of race relations, and the controversies tht continue to surround it.

  • Night Falls Fast by Kay Redfield Jamison
    National Bestseller
    From the author of the bestselling memoir An Unquiet Mind, comes this groundbreaking look at suicide. Weaving together a historical and scientific exploration of the subject with personal essays on individual suicides, Jamison brings expertise and compassion to this devastating epidemic.

  • No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod
    Years after the red Calum MacDonald led his family out of the Scottish highlands and into exile, the most recent generation of clann Chalum Ruaidh still faces unmitigated hardship. But as they navigate their way through trials and tragedies, their epic saga is a testament to the hope and strength fostered through the common bond of history and tradition.

  • Nobody's Fool by Richard Russo
    Russo makes a serious exploration of the ties between fathers and sons, giving us a bittersweet homage to America's small towns and a ruefully wise take on what earlier writers called predestination, but what Russo's characters experience as plain dumb luck.

  • Not A Day Goes By by E. Lynn Harris
    The sensational bestseller that reintroduces two of Harris's most infamous characters-- John Basil Henderson, a retired football star and playboy, and Yancey Harrington, his up-and-coming broadway star fiancé--as the sexual pyrotechnics (and manipulative antics) fly.

  • Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
    In this Vintage International Original, the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle tells the poignant story of one college student's coming-of-age in Tokyo.

  • The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
    The first in Alexander McCall Smith's acclaimed series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency introduces Mma Precious Ramotswe, a witty, wise and charming woman who opens the only female detective agency in Botswana to help her fellow countrymen "solve the mysteries in their lives."

  • Ocean of Words by Ha Jin
    Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award
    Ocean of Words is Ha Jin's collection of short stories centering around men serving in the People's Army in the 1970s. Poignant, and often funny, these stories offer us a glimpse into an unimaginable world.

  • On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks
    National Bestseller
    Set against the backdrop of 1960s America, when the country was poised between the paranoia of the Cold War and the ebullience of the New Frontier, Faulks' story of a desperate love affair captures all the sights and sounds of an era.

  • One Step Behind by Henning Mankell
    Inspector Wallander is back on the job, but this time he's juggling the strains of a baffling case and mounting personal problems--the combination of which threaten to be more than he can handle.

  • Only in London* by Hanan al-Shaykh
    Four Arab immigrants meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to London, each with their own personal agenda and in search of the freedoms promised by a new life in Britain. Through the city and across cultural borders, their lives intertwine with humorous and unforgettable results.
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  • Open Secrets by Alice Munro
    In these powerful short stories, Alice Munro follows the lives of eight dynamic women, examining the culture and values of her world while weaving complex, luminous, and poetic insights of the milieu she has made so intensely her own.

  • Our Guys by Bernard Lefkowitz
    Part compelling courtroom drama, part sociological study, part true-crime mystery, Our Guys is the story of a town that most people would call perfect--and a horrific event that stripped away those illusions to reveal questions that most residents were unwilling to face.

  • Perfume by Patrick Süskind
    International Bestseller
    A story in which the trajectories of genius, obsession, and cruelty come together in one extraordinary character, Perfume offers a fascinating look at the seething underside of the Age of Reason.

  • Personal History by Katharine Graham
    National Bestseller
    Pulitzer Prize Winner
    In her critically acclaimed memoir, the woman who piloted the Washington Post through the crises of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate tells her story--one that is extraordinary both for the events it encompasses and for its courage, candor, and dignity.

  • A Piece of Mine by J. California Cooper
    Cooper's extraordinary first short story collection introduces the elements that were to become intgregal to the author's trademark style: an intimate narrative voice, profound moral messages, and multidimensional characters. A Piece of Mine remains one of her best loved books.

  • Plainsong by Kent Haruf
    National Bestseller
    National Book Award Finalist
    The novel that's captured the heart of a nation, Plainsong is a luminous and enduring portrait of seven lonely lives--and the community and landscape that bind them together.

  • Plainwater by Anne Carson
    Succinct and astonishingly beautiful, the pieces of poetry and prose in this collection stretch the boundaries of language and literary form, while juxtaposing classical and modern traditions.

  • Possession by A. S. Byatt
    Booker Prize Winner
    Two young literary scholars search to discover the secret relationship between the two Victorian poets on whom each is an authority, and in so doing, become figures of romance themselves.

  • The Professor's House by Willa Cather
    A professor who achieves academic success in middle age begins to realize that what meaning remains in his life lies in the past, forcing him to reevaluate his relationships and his place in the world.

  • Push by Sapphire
    Precious Jones, 16 years old and pregnant by her father with her second child, meets a determined and highly radical teacher who takes her on a journey of transformation and redemption.

  • Rapture by Susan Minot
    In a New York apartment two long-estranged lovers meet to try and resuscitate their passion. As Minot deftly interweaves their thoughts and sensations, Rapture becomes a brilliant meditation on the power of sex.

  • The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
    A story of love and secrets, crime and compassion, unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar Germany, The Reader is a deeply moving novel about a young boy's erotic awakening.

  • Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane
    Set in postwar Northern Ireland, Seamus Deane's first novel is the transfixing story of a boy trying to uncover the secrets of the grown-up world.

  • A Recipe for Bees by Gail Anderson-Dargatz
    Anderson-Dargatz's richly textured portrait of an extraordinary marriage celebrates the magic of romance and the endurance of love. Interweaving lore about bees with vivid scenes of domestic life, A Recipe for Bees illuminates the intimate details that give life it's significance.

  • Red Water: A Novel by Judith Freeman
    In 1857, at a place called Mountain Meadow in southern Utah, 120 emigrants were massacred, and twenty years later John D. Lee--previously a member of Brigham Young's inner circle--was blamed. Red Water imagines Lee's life through the eyes of three of his nineteen wives, painting a vivid portrait of a formative period in the American West.

  • A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson
    In her latest novel, Mona Simpson traces budding relationship between Tom Owens, a brilliant barefoot entrepreneur, and his illegitimate daughter, Jane, the raggedy, preternaturally observant ten-year-old suddenly dispatched into his care.

  • Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
    In the 1840s a young English castaway who has been living among the Australian aborigines for sixteen years returns to civilization and causes fear and suspicion in his countrymen with his strange mix of black and white.

  • The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
    National Bestseller
    Conway sets the story of her youth in Australia against the coming of age of her homeland itself as the British Empire begins to disintegrate.

  • The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
    Set in contemporary Toronto, The Robber Bride is Atwood's imaginative retelling of a Brothers Grimm fairytale in which an evil groom lures three maidens into his lair and devours them one by one.

  • The Rock* by Kanan Makiya
    A narrative of mythic power, The Rock weaves together stories, legends, and beliefs to consider the disputed history of one of the world's most spiritually resonant and politically contentious sites--the Rock of Jerusalem.
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  • Rules of the Wild by Francesca Marciano
    A mesmerizing debut novel which evokes the startlingly exotic world of contemporary expatriates living in Nairobi. At the center of the story is Esmé, a free spirit in search of love and a place to call home, and torn by her love of two men.

  • Sap Rising by Christine Lincoln
    Christine Lincoln takes us inside the hearts and minds of African Americans whose lives unfold against the backdrop of a vividly evoked rural community. Woven throughout these mesmerizing stories is the extraordinary depth of emotion experienced by those who find themselves choosing between the comforts of the familiar and the excitement of what might be.

  • Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap by Peggy Orenstein
    Orenstein's classic account of the hurdles facing adolescent girls in America is the result of months spent observing and interviewing children at two California schools, taking us into the lives of real young women who are struggling with eating disorders, sexual harassment, and declining academic achievement.

  • Shadow Man by Mary Gordon
    The author examines and reconstructs her idealized memories of the father who died when she was seven years old.

  • Shiksa Goddess (Or, How I Spent My Forties): Essays by Wendy Wasserstein
    Celebrated playwright and magnetic wit Wendy Wasserstein presents thirty-five urbane, inspiring, and thought-provoking essays, all infused with her trademark irreverent humor.

  • The Short History of a Prince by Jane Hamilton
    Set in Jane Hamilton's signature Midwest, The Short History of a Prince is the story of Walter McCloud and his ambition to become a great ballet dancer. With compassion and humor, and alternating between Walter's adolescent and adult voices, the novel tells of Walter's heartbreak as he realizes that his passion cannot make up for the innate talent that he lacks.

  • Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore
    In an eloquent, mesmerizing voice, Mikal Gilmore guides us through generations of his family's history to uncover the sources that led his brother Gary Gilmore--in 1977 the first man executed in America in over a decade--to murder, and the crippling aftermath of Gary's deeds on his family.

  • Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
    From the award-winning author of The Mistress of Spices comes the bestselling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart.

  • Sleeping at the Starlite Motel and Other Adventures on the Way Back Home by Bailey White
    National Bestseller
    White gives us an amusing and penetrating collection of sketches of unforgettable incidents and characters in her small hometown in southern Georgia.

  • Slow Emergencies by Nancy Huston
    Nancy Huston, award-winning author of The Mark of the Angel, meditates on the conflict between life and art for a talented young dancer in her poetic novel.

  • Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
    National Bestseller
    Pen/Faulkner Award Winner
    The local community on a remote island off the coast of Washington is rife with racial tension as a Japanese American is put on trial for the murder of a white man.

  • The Solace of Leaving Early* by Haven Kimmel The bestselling author of A Girl Named Zippy delivers a powerful first novel that is at once a romance and a meditation on grief and faith. Langston Braverman and Amos Townsend are both caught in their own patterns of life until they are unexpectedly drawn together by two little girls whose need for love and security transcends everything else.
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  • Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime by J. California Cooper
    In one of Cooper's finest collections characteristic themes of romance, heartbreak, adversity, and faith resonate throughout stories filled with inspiration and laughter.

  • The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
    First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling," the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story Faulkner told through separate monologues by her three brothers--the idiot Benjy, the neurotic suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason.

  • The Stardust Lounge: Stories from a Boy's Adolescence by Deborah Digges
    Unwilling to give up on her son when his recklessness and defiance began to spiral out of control, Deborah Digges turned to unconventional methods to save her family. Filled with heartening wisdom won from the tribulations of experience, The Stardust Lounge is a powerful memoir.

  • Straight Man by Richard Russo
    The author of Nobody's Fool performs yet another high-wire walk between hilarity and heartache as he tells the story of Hank Devereaux, a once-promising novelist on the brink of a mid-life crisis. Side-splitting and true-to-life, Straight Man is witty, compassionate, and impossible to put down.

  • Stuffed: Adventures of a Restaurant Family by Patricia Volk
    In her memoir, Patricia Volk welcomes us with open arms into her crazy, loving, infuriating, and wonderful family as she recounts a life steeped in over one hundred years of New York restaurant history.

  • Surfacing by Margaret Atwood
    A young artist returns with three friends to the rural cabin in which she was raised to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance and confront the repressed memories and hidden secrets that have plagued her.

  • Swift as Desire by Laura Esquivel
    The bestselling author of Like Water for Chocolate returns to her favorite themes of the power of love and the truths of the human heart in this story of an exceptional love affair. Years after his passionate marriage is torn apart by a terrible event, J–blio Chi lies dying. Only then is his daughter able to unravel the mystery of her parents' relationship with the hope of bringing about a surprising reconciliation.

  • Swimming Toward the Ocean by Carole L. Glickfeld
    From the author of the Flannery O'Connor Award-winning collection Useful Gifts, a sharp and tender debut novel chronicling the boisterous life and loves of a Russian Jewish immigrant family in 1950s New York City.

  • The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby
    Liza Dalby's brilliant novel is the imagined diary of Murasaki Shikibu, an eleventh-century Japanese courtesan who regaled the empress with her artful stories.

  • Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
    The third book in McCall Smith's beloved No. Ladies' Detective Agency series follows the continuing adventures of Precious Ramotswe as she solves a few more mysteries, dispenses useful advice, ponders her marriage to a kind man, and promotes her secretary.

  • Three Junes by Julia Glass
    National Bestseller
    National Book Award Winner
    Julia Glass's finely observed first novel traces the lives of a Scottish family across three summers and several generations, as they experience the joy and sadness of both familial and romantic love.

  • The Tiny One by Eliza Minot
    The Tiny One is Minot's poetic and touching evocation of a bright and sensitive little girl coming to terms with the tragic death of a parent. More than a portrait of grief, the novel is a powerful testament to the healing powers of love.

  • To the Wedding by John Berger
    In this beautiful and inspiring story of the ties of family and love, a young woman's fiancé refuses to leave her when she discovers shortly before her wedding that she has contracted HIV from a brief encounter several years earlier.

  • Tough Jews by Rich Cohen
    In a gruesomely funny history of muscle, moxy, and money, Rich Cohen traces the stories of a generation of gangsters like Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Louis Lepke, deftly shattering stereotypes along the way.

  • Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle
    National Bestseller
    Taking up where his beloved A Year in Provence leaves off, Peter Mayle offers us another delicious and evocative book about life in Provence. With affection and wit he spins his tales from a unique insider's perspective.

  • Tracks by Robyn Davidson
    Thomas Cook Travel Award Winner
    Testing her physical and emotional resources to the limit, the inexperienced young Davidson crosses half of Australia on foot, in the process coming to know the desert, the rhythms of traditional Aboriginal society, and herself.

  • Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian
    From the bestselling author of Midwives, comes an explosive tale of gender identity. Allison Banks knows that Dana Stevens can give her the love and security she needs, but when he announces that he is undergoing a sex-change operation, Allison finds herself forced to confront the most private of questions in a very public forum.

  • Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
    National Bestseller
    Author of Bird By Bird and Crooked Little Heart
    At once tough, personal, affectionate, wise, and funny, Traveling Mercies is the story of how Anne Lamott learned to shine the light of faith on the darkest part of ordinary life, exposing surprising pockets of meaning and hope.

  • A Trial by Jury* by D. Graham Burnett
    Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett's account of his experience serving as foreman on a jury is both a riveting read and a nuanced examination of the legal system and the average citizen's place in it.
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  • True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
    Booker Prize Winner
    Legendary Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is vividly brought to life in a fictional novel by the award-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Based partly on historical documents, this is Ned's own account, set down for his infant daughter so that she can one day know the truth about his life.

  • True North by Jill Ker Conway
    In the second volume of her autobiography, Conway relates the story of her higher education and her vocation as a historian, her marriage, her teaching, and her strong interest in and dedication to the female intellectual and activist community.

  • The True Sources of the Nile by Sarah Stone
    A mesmerizing story about the conflicting claims of duty and love, The True Sources of the Nile traces the life of American human rights activist and her relationship with a government official in Burundi. Set against the political and cultural landscape of Africa, it is a love affair that exposes troubling secrets in both their pasts, forcing them to confront the moral implications of their actions.

  • Uncle Tungsten* by Oliver Sacks
    National Bestseller
    In this beautifully written memoir, the man who became a neurologist and one of our finest science writers tells the story of a remarkable family and a childhood enchanted by the wonders of science.
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  • The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
    By the author of Remains of the Day
    The greatest pianist alive comes to a Kafka-esque city for what could be the most important performance of his life, only to be left confused and frantic by large gaps in his memory and by the many demands made of him by everyone he comes across.

  • The Unknown Errors of Our Lives by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
    In nine poignant stories spiked with humor and intelligence, the bestselling author of Sister of My Heart and The Mistress of Spices captures lives at crossroad moments--caught between past and present, home and abroad, tradition and fresh experience.

  • An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
    National Bestseller
    The professor of medicine and international authority on manic-depressive illness recounts her own intense struggle with the disease.

  • The Vine of Desire by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
    Reuniting characters from her bestselling novel Sister of My Heart, Divakaruni has created a powerful narrative that challenges the bond between two lifelong friends, as the husband of one becomes dangerously attracted to the other.

  • Vintage Spiritual Classics
    A guide to timeless spiritual writing, including The Desert Fathers, The Rule of St. Benedict, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, The Imitation of Christ, The Book of Job, and the The Confessions of St. Augustine.

  • The Voyage by Philip Caputo
    In the tradition of great seafaring adventures, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Philip Caputo captivates readers in this timeless novel about courage, intrigue, and the inescapable bond of family.

  • The Wake of the Wind by J. California Cooper
    Fleeing the memories of a devastated South after the Civil War, two former slaves make a home for themselves far from the source of their pain and suffering. Despite constant threats of violence against them, they set out with determination and ingenuity to accomplish their goal--a strong foundation of emancipation and hope for future generations.

  • Waiting by Ha Jin
    National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award Winner
    National Bestseller
    In Waiting, Ha Jin portrays the life of Lin Kong, a dedicated doctor torn between two women and two very different ways of life. With wisdom, restraint, and empathy, Jin gracefully delivers a story that puts the cherished ideals of individualism and self-fulfillment into perspective.

  • War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
    National Bestseller
    National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
    Veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges presents a thought-provoking and powerful treatise on the nature of war, its impact on those who wage it, and the dangerous myths it invokes that corrupt politics and seduce entire societies.

  • When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
    Santiago recounts her own coming of age in 1960s Puerto Rico and her family's move to the alien and frightening world of New York City.

  • When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro
    National Bestseller
    Booker Prize Finalist
    In a novel that delves into the maze of human memory, a young British man returns to Shanghai to investigate his parents' mysterious disappearances years before. The result is a fascinating narrative that examines the roles of truth, perception, and memory in shaping our lives.

  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith
    International Bestseller
    National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
    The stunning debut that took the literary world by storm, Zadie Smith's White Teeth is a humorous and engaging tale of two unlikely friends whose lives intertwine over the course of three generations and across three different cultures.

  • The Whore's Child and Other Stories by Richard Russo
    National Bestseller
    In Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Russo follows his sensational novel Empire Falls with a bestselling collection that showcases his bittersweet wit, deep knowledge of human nature, and spellbinding narrative gifts.

  • Woman by Natalie Angier
    National Book Award Finalist
    A wildly entertaining and wonderfully informative tour of the female body and mind, Woman marks an important shift in feminist consciousness, challenging gender stereotypes and galvanizing both scientific thought and feminist rhetoric.

  • A Woman's Education: The Road from Coorain Leads to Smith College by Jill Ker Conway
    The bestselling author of True North continues her remarkable autobiography with an account of her decade as the first woman president of Smith College. Showing true strength and courage, Conway battled to equip Smith with the tools necessary to face the future as a leading institution of single-sex education, while at the same time dealing with the private pressures of her ailing husband.
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  • A Year in Provence
    Here is the book that started it all--in this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle recounts what it is like to realize his long-cherished dream of moving into a 200-year-old farmhouse in the french countryside with his wife and two dogs.

  • You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers
    National Bestseller
    In his first novel, Dave Eggers has written a moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. It reminds us once again what an important, necessary talent Dave Eggers is.

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    The True Sources of the Nile
    by Sarah Stone

    "A complex novel, clarified by a confident and wonderfully readable language. It's full of energy and place and fact, a romance, a tragedy, and a vital history lesson all in one."
    --O, The Oprah Magazine