Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

The Golden House

Salman Rushdie · 384 pages

"A modern American epic set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture--a hurtling, page-turning mystery that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities On the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of "the Gardens," a cloistered community in New York's Greenwich Village. The

The Personal Librarian

Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray · 352 pages

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world, known for her impeccable taste and shrewd negotiating for critical works as she helps create a world-class collectio

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

You Know You Love Me

Cecily von Ziegesar · 232 pages

In You Know You Love Me, the sequel to Gossip Girl, it's brunette vixen Blair Waldorf's seventeenth birthday, and she knows exactly what she wants--Nate, her studly troubles boyfriend of three years. But Blair's been too busy filling out Ivy League college applications to notice that Nate has found himself another playmate.

Lies and Weddings

Kevin Kwan · 437 pages

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.

One with You

Sylvia Day · 473 pages

The finale to the crossfire saga finds Gideon and Eva fighting for their marriage, trying to keep their vows even when ugly secrets have been revealed. Falling in love with Gideon Cross was the easiest thing Eva had ever done. Marrying him was a dream come true. Staying married to him is the fight of her life. Their love was both a refuge from the storm and the most violent of tempests. They bar

The House Girl

Tara Conklin · 372 pages

A novel of love, family, and justice follows Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in a Manhattan law firm, as she searches for the "perfect plaintiff" to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Tom Wolfe · 690 pages

The Heiress

Rachel Hawkins · 294 pages

Rumors

Anna Godbersen · 448 pages

After bidding good-bye to New York's brightest star, Elizabeth Holland, rumors continue to fly about her untimely demise. All eyes are on those closest to the dearly departed: her mischievous sister, Diana, now the family's only hope for redemption; New York's most notorious cad, Henry Schoon-maker, the flame Elizabeth never extinguished; the seductive Penelope Hayes, poised to claim all that her

The House at Riverton

Kate Morton · 192 pages

Summer 1924. On the eve of a glittering society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again. Winter 1999. Grace Bradley, ninety-eight, one-time housemaid at Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet's suicide. Ghost awaken and old me

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Tennessee Williams · 158 pages

Members of a neurotic Southern family gather to face the impending death of their patriarch, Big Daddy, and battle over the inheritance of his vast estate.

Death Comes to Pemberley

P.D. James · 330 pages

Death Comes to Pemberly is a murder mystery based on the characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. The novel joins Mr and Mrs Darcy after they have been married for six year and just as they are preparing to hold their annual ball in honour of Mr Darcy’s mother. Everything is going well, Jane and Bingley have arrived and their staff have preparations well in hand. Then the night befor

The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood · 638 pages

More than fifty years on, Iris Chase is remembering Laura's mysterious death. And so begins an extraordinary and compelling story of two sisters and their secrets. Set against a panoramic backdrop of twentieth-century history, The Blind Assassin is an epic tale of memory, intrigue and betrayal...

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

Rules of Summer

Joanna Philbin · 352 pages

Spending the summer working as an errand girl for the Rule family in the Hamptons, seventeen-year-old Rory befriends the family's teenaged daughter and develops feelings for their older son, but she finds that societal rules can be hard to break.

Bleak House

Charles Dickens · 815 pages

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, t

The Swans of Fifth Avenue

Melanie Benjamin

North and South

Elizabeth Gaskell · 450 pages

When her father leaves the Church in a crisis of conscience, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the north of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of the local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. Thi

The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir

Griffin Dunne · 400 pages

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

One Fifth Avenue

Candace Bushnell · 480 pages

From one of the most consistently astute and engaging social commentators of our day comes another look at the tough and tender women of New York City--this time, through the lens of where they live.One Fifth Avenue, the Art Deco beauty towering over one of Manhattan's oldest and most historically hip neighborhoods, is a one-of-a-kind address, the sort of building you have to earn your way into--o

The Nanny Diaries

Emma McLaughlin, Nicola Kraus · 368 pages