The Touch

At the Water's Edge

Sara Gruen · 354 pages

After embarrassing themselves at the social event of the year in high society Philadelphia on New Year's Eve of 1942, Maddie and Ellis Hyde are cut off financially by Ellis's father, a former army Colonel who is already embarrassed by his son's inability to serve in WWII due to his being colorblind. To Maddie's horror, Ellis decides that the only way to regain his father's favor is to succeed in a

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton · 320 pages

Edith Wharton's most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War, is a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s, the world in which she grew up, and from which she spent her life escaping. Newland Archer, Wharton's protagonist, charming, tactful, enlightened, is a thorough product of this society; he accepts its standards and abides by its rules but

The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald · 182 pages

Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate – a marvelous fusion into unity of the curious incongruities of the life of the period – which reveals a hero like no other – one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts. "There was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to

The Forsyte Saga

John Galsworthy · 416 pages

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy · 716 pages

War and Peace delineates in graphic detail events surrounding the French invasion of Russia, and the impact of the Napoleonic era on Tsarist society, as seen through the eyes of five Russian aristocratic families. The novel begins in the year 1805 during the reign of Tsar Alexander I and leads up to the 1812 French invasion of Russia by Napoleon. The era of Catherine the Great (1762–1796), when t

The Unicorn Hunt

Dorothy Dunnett · 672 pages

The fifth title in the "House of Niccolo" sequence, recreating the perilous world of trade, war and banking in Renaissance Europe. Niccolo has returned to Venice from Africa - richer, wiser yet ever unpredictable. He journeys to Scotland, closer at hand to the secrets of his birth.

Scarlett

Alexandra Ripley · 832 pages

A Woman of Substance

Barbara Taylor Bradford · 843 pages

Emma Harte Lowther Ainsley is seventy-eight years old and one of the richest most powerful women in the world. Self-reliant and ruthless, she uses money as a weapon and adversity as a tool. In her poverty-stricken youth, Emma exhibited an uncommon amount of initiative and intelligence even as a maidservant on a Yorkshire estate. Pregnant and unwed at fifteen, she fled her shameful situation to s

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe · 690 pages

The Seamstress

Frances de Pontes Peebles · 646 pages

As seamstresses, the young sisters Emilia and Luzia dos Santos know how to cut, how to mend, and how to conceal. These are useful skills in the lawless backcountry of Brazil, where ruthless land barons called "colonels" feud with bands of outlaw cangaceiros, trapping innocent residents in the cross fire.Emilia, whose knowledge of the world comes from fashion magazines and romance novels, dreams of

Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

Ramona Ausubel · 336 pages

"From the award-winning author of No One Is Here Except All of Us, an imaginative novel about a wealthy New England family in the 1960s and '70s that suddenly loses its fortune--and its bearings. Labor Day, 1976, Martha's Vineyard. Summering at the family beach house along this moneyed coast of New England, Fern and Edgar--married with three children--are happily preparing for a family birthday ce

Middlemarch

George Eliot · 795 pages

Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.

From the Terrace

John O'Hara · 939 pages

The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James · 592 pages

The Portrait of a Lady is widely held to be the outstanding work of Henry James’s “early” period, and among the finest novels of his entire career. When the eccentric Mrs. Touchett “takes up” her charming American niece, Isabel Archer, and returns with her to England, her husband and son, the invalid Ralph, are first mystified, then bemused. Soon, however, they are smitten, as also is their aristo

Mother's Milk

Edward St. Aubyn · 291 pages

A brillant and scathingly funny family portrait that shows the shifting allegiances between parents, children, husbands and wives. The author combines the most excruciating pain with the driest comedy.

The Shadow Sister

Lucinda Riley · 498 pages

Star D'Aplièse is at a crossroads in her life after the sudden death of her beloved father--the elusive billionaire, affectionately called Pa Salt by his six daughters, all adopted from across the four corners of the world. He has left each of them a clue to her true heritage, and Star nervously decides to follow hers, which leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London, and the start of a whole

Sins of the Fathers

Susan Howatch · 718 pages

This family saga traces the fortunes of the Van Zales of New York City from post Word War II through the 1960's. Cornelius Van Zale, czar of a Wall Street investment bank, lords it over his family, friends and underlings. His cut-throat tactics have far-reaching adverse effects on everyone around him, particularly on his vulnerable daughter, Vicky.

A Woman of Independent Means

Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey · 266 pages

A bestselling sensation when it was first published by Viking in 1978, A Woman of Independent Means has delighted millions of readers and was the inspiration for the television miniseries starring Sally Field. At the turn of the century, a time when women had few choices, Bess Steed Garner inherits a legacy—not only of wealth but of determination and desire, making her truly a woman of independen

The Wife

Sigrid Undset · 423 pages

The Duke and I

Julia Quinn · 420 pages

By all accounts, Simon Basset is on the verge of proposing to his best friend's sister--the lovely and almost-on-the-shelf--Daphne Bridgerton. But the two of the know the truth--it's all an elaborate ruse to keep Simon free from marriage-minded society mothers. And as for Daphne, surely she will attract some worthy suitors now that it seems a duke has declared her desirable....

Evergreen

Belva Plain · 595 pages

The towering modern classic of passion and ambition that forever changed the way we see the courageous immigrants who came to America's shores -- the story of Anna Friedman transfixes us with the turbulent emotions of a woman and her family touched by war, tragedy, and the devastating secrets of one forbidden love... bittersweet and evergreen.From the Paperback edition.

The Shuttle

Frances Hodgson Burnett · 512 pages

A Fine Imitation

Amber Brock · 320 pages

Enduring a life of lonely desperation in spite of her beauty, pedigree, and Park Avenue penthouse, Vera is drawn to a secretive French artist who is painting a mural in her coveted building, a relationship that reminds her about a talented forger from her past who nearly cost her everything.

The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri · 406 pages

Brothers Subhash and Udayan Mitra pursue vastly different lives--Udayan in rebellion-torn Calcutta, Subhash in a quiet corner of America--until a shattering tragedy compels Subhash to return to India, where he endeavors to heal family wounds.