Work Like Any Other

Us Conductors

Sean Michaels · 347 pages

"In a finely woven series of flashbacks and correspondence, Lev Termen, the Russian scientist, inventor, and spy, tells the story of his life to his "one true love, " Clara Rockmore, the finest theremin player in the world. In the first half of the book, we learn of Termen's early days as a scientist in Leningrad during the Bolshevik Revolution, the acclaim he receives as the inventor of the there

A Lesson Before Dying

Ernest J. Gaines · 256 pages

In his first novel in ten years, Ernest Gaines, the highly acclaimed author of the best-selling The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brings us a wrenching story of death and identity in a small Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s. A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white

Homegoing

Yaa Gyasi · 320 pages

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the

The Evening Chorus

Helen Humphreys · 294 pages

The story of James, a pilot struggling to survive in a German POW camp, his young war-bride, Rose, back in England trying to make sense of her life, and his sister, whose own story is also rewritten by the tragedies of WWII.

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens · 469 pages

Great Expectations is the thirteenth novel by Charles Dickens and his penultimate completed novel. It depicts the education of an orphan nicknamed Pip (the book is a bildungsroman; a coming-of-age story). It is Dickens' second novel, after David Copperfield, to be fully narrated in the first person. The novel was first published as a serial in Dickens's weekly periodical All the Year Round, from 1

All the Pretty Horses

Cormac McCarthy · 301 pages

*All the Pretty Horses* is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. Its romanticism (in contrast to the bleakness of McCarthy's earlier work) brought the writer much public attention. It was a bestseller, and it won both the U.S. National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Along with *The Crossing* (1994), and C*ities of the Plain* (19

The Choiring of the Trees

Donald Harington · 450 pages

War Trash

Ha Jin · 352 pages

Set in 1951–53, ***War Trash*** takes the form of the memoir of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer, one of a corps of “volunteers” sent by Mao to help shore up the Communist side in Korea. When Yu is captured, his command of English thrusts him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare that defines the POW camp. Taking us behind the barbed wire, Ha Jin draws on tru

Darkness at Noon

Arthur Koestler · 254 pages

"The newly discovered lost text of Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, Darkness at Noon--the haunting portrait of a revolutionary, imprisoned and tortured under totalitarian rule--is now restored and in a completely new translation. Editor Michael Scammell and translator Philip Boehm bring us a brilliant novel, a remarkable discovery, and a new translation of an international classic"--

March

Geraldine Brooks · 304 pages

The Green Mile: The Screenplay

Frank Darabont · 182 pages

The Green Mile screenplay, written by Frank Darabont, is an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. It tells the poignant story of John Coffey, a death row inmate who possesses supernatural powers. These abilities force the guards and fellow prisoners to reexamine their lives. The screenplay remains remarkably faithful to the novel, capturing nearly every character and major scene, often with verbatim

A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

The Second Life of Mirielle West

Amanda Skenandore · 384 pages

The Good Wife

Stewart O'Nan · 312 pages

From a writer who reveals 'the plainness of everyday life with straightforward lyricism' (The New York Times Book Review), the story of one remarkable, average woman. On a clear winter night in upstate New York, two young men break in to a house they believe is empty. It isn't, and within minutes an old woman is dead and the house is in flames. Soon after, the men are caught by the police. Acro

Mudbound

Hillary Jordan · 335 pages

"It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm; a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not; charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eld

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 174 pages

First published in the Soviet journal Novy Mir in 1962, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich stands as a classic of contemporary literature. The story of labor-camp inmate Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, it graphically describes his struggle to maintain his dignity in the face of communist oppression. An unforgettable portrait of the entire world of Stalin's forced work camps, One Day in the Life of Iv

The River Is Waiting

Wally Lamb · 451 pages

Corby Ledbetter is struggling. New fatherhood, the loss of his job, and a growing secret addiction have thrown his marriage to his beloved Emily into a tailspin. And that's before he causes the tragedy that tears the family apart. Sentenced to prison, Corby struggles to survive life on the inside, where he bears witness to frightful acts of brutality but also experiences small acts of kindness

The Missing

Tim Gautreaux · 375 pages

The author of The Clearing ("the finest American novel in a long, long time"--Annie Proulx) now surpasses himself with a story whose range and cast of characters is even broader, with the fate of a stolen child looming throughout.Sam Simoneaux's troopship docked in France just as World War I came to an end. Still, what he saw of the devastation there sent him back to New Orleans eager for a normal

The Blue Star

Tony Earley · 295 pages

Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two. Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's

Mother of Pearl

Melinda Haynes · 466 pages

The Power of One

Bryce Courtenay · 518 pages

Follows Peekay, a white British boy in South Africa during World War II, between the ages of five and eleven, as he survives an abusive boarding school and goes on to succeed in life and the boxing ring, with help from a chicken, a boxer, a pianist, black African prisoners, and many others.

The House of the Dead

Fyodor Dostoyevsky · 308 pages

The House of the Dead (Russian: Записки из Мёртвого дома, Zapiski iz Myortvovo doma) is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1860–2 in the journal Vremya by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian prison camp. The novel has also been published under the titles Memoirs from the House of The Dead, Notes from the Dead House (or Notes from a Dead House

No One Is Coming to Save Us

Stephanie Powell Watts · 384 pages

"JJ Ferguson has returned home to Pinewood, North Carolina, to build his dream house and to pursue his high school sweetheart, Ava. But as he reenters his former world, where factories are in decline and the legacy of Jim Crow is still felt, he's startled to find that the people he once knew and loved have changed just as much as he has. Ava is now married and desperate for a baby, though she can'

At Night We Walk in Circles

Daniel Alarcon · 374 pages

Nelson's life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can't seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson's hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the s