The Rehearsal

All the Light We Cannot See

Anthony Doerr · 544 pages

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, a stunningly ambitious and beautiful novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are t

Only Revolutions

Mark Z. Danielewski · 384 pages

Moving back and forth in American history, a kaleidoscopic novel follows Hailey and Sam, two wayward teenagers, as they crash New Orleans parties, barrel up the Mississippi, head through the Badlands, and take on other adventures.

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison · 338 pages

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s ori

The Small Backs of Children

Lidia Yuknavitch · 256 pages

In a war-torn village in Eastern Europe, an American photographer captures a heart-stopping image: a young girl flying toward the lens, fleeing a fiery explosion that has engulfed her home and family. The image, instantly iconic, garners acclaim and prizes and, in the United States, becomes a subject of obsession for one writer, the photographer's best friend, who has suffered a devastating traged

Amy and Isabelle

Elizabeth Strout · 320 pages

With compassion, humor, and striking insight, Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical tres

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami · 508 pages

The unlikely alliance between Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old runaway, and the aging Nakata, a man who has never recovered from a wartime affliction, brings dramatic changes to both characters as they embark on a surreal odyssey through a strange, sometimes violent, sometimes fantastical world.

Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer · 288 pages

A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and an undersexed guide dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, J

Election

Tom Perrotta · 200 pages

Who really cares who gets elected president of Winwood High School? Nobody - except Tracy Flick. Tracy's one of those students of boundless energy and ambition who somehow find the time to do everything - edit the school paper and yearbook, star in the musical, sleep with her favorite teacher. Tracy's heart is set on becoming president of Winwood, and what Tracy wants, Tracy gets. What's more, her

Sophie's World

Jostein Gaarder · 456 pages

The protagonists are Sophie Amundsen, a 14-year-old girl, and Alberto Knox, her philosophy teacher. The novel chronicles their metaphysical relationship as they study Western philosophy from its beginnings to the present. A bestseller in Norway.

Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff · 400 pages

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the env

Dear Mr. M

Herman Koch · 416 pages

Once a celebrated writer, M had his greatest success with a suspense novel based on a real-life disappearance: a history teacher who went missing one winter after having a brief affair with a beautiful student of his. The teacher was never found. Upon publication, M's novel was a runaway bestseller, an international breakthrough. Now M's career is fading. But why is his bizarre, seemingly timid ne

Maps

Nuruddin Farah · 259 pages

"In this novel, Farah tells the story of the orphan Askar. Before he is born, Askar has lost his father to the bloody war dividing Somalia and Ethiopia, and his mother dies giving birth to him. It is only thanks to Misra, a kindhearted woman who discovers him next to his mother's corpse and takes him into her home, that he survives. But Askar is a true child of his times, and as he matures he begi

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Diaz · 352 pages

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J. R. R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us

The Virgin Suicides

Jeffrey Eugenides · 249 pages

Let the Great World Spin

Colum McCann · 349 pages

In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann's stunningly in

The Orchard Keeper

Cormac McCarthy · 246 pages

*The Orchard Keeper* tells of John Wesley Rattner, a young boy, and Marion Sylder, an outlaw and bootlegger who, unbeknownst to either of them, has killed the boy's father.

Taming the Beast

Emily Maguire · 317 pages

Prey

Lurlene McDaniel

A teacher is supposed to impart a love of learning and a thirst for knowledge. It's a bit different with Ms. Lori Settles. All the kids are talking about how hot she is--and she is especially interested in Ryan Piccoli. When she starts giving Ryan extra attention, he's feeling more than happy--at first. He's used to being the class clown, but really he's a loner. One day after school, the friendsh

Maidenhair

Mikhail Shishkin · 506 pages

Day after day Russian asylum-seekers sit across from the interpreter and Peter--the Swiss officers who guard the gates to paradise--and tell of the atrocities they've suffered, or that they've invented, or heard from someone else.The reader lives inside the nameless interpreter's head, with the narratives combining throughout.

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Jennifer Egan · 352 pages

Jennifer Egan's spellbinding interlocking narratives circle the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths intersect with theirs, over many

The English Patient

Michael Ondaatje · 307 pages

With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of

Voice of the Fire

Alan Moore · 320 pages

Mrs. Dalloway

Virginia Woolf · 219 pages

Virginia Woolf’s novel chronicles a day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a politician’s wife in 1920s London, as she prepares to host a party that evening. The narrative follows Clarissa’s thoughts (and sometimes those of people she meets) as she goes about her errands, and events in the day remind her of her youth and friendships from the past. As the book progresses characters from the past eme

The Hours

Michael Cunningham