Palace Walk

The Children's Book

A.S. Byatt · 620 pages

Shortlisted for the Man Booker PrizeA spellbinding novel, at once sweeping and intimate, from the Booker Prize--winning author of Possession, that spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children's book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves.When Olive Wellwood's oldest son discovers a runaway named Philip ske

A Doubter's Almanac

Ethan Canin · 677 pages

"Milo Andret, the genius who solved the Malosz Conjecture and won the Fields Medal for mathematics, had an unusual, even eerie mind from birth, but not until he moves to Berkeley in the 1970s to pursue a ph. D. does he realize the extent of his singular talents. From the drug-soaked enclaves of beatnik California to the verdant lawns of Princeton University, from turbo-charged Wall Street to the q

The Son

Philipp Meyer · 561 pages

Part epic of Texas, part classic coming-of-age story, part unflinching portrait of the bloody price of power, this is a novel that maps the legacy of violence in the American West through the lives of the McCulloughs, an ambitious family as resilient and dangerous as the land they claim. Spring, 1849. Eli McCullough is thirteen years old when a marauding band of Comanches takes him captive. Brave

The Book Of Fathers

Miklos Vamos · 480 pages

When in 1705 Kornell Csillag's grandfather returns destitute to his native Hungary from exile, he happens across a gold fob-watch gleaming in the mud. The shipwrecked fortunes of the Csillag family suddenly take a new and marvelous turn. The golden watch brings an unexpected gift to the future generations of firstborn sons: clairvoyance. Passed down from father to son, this gift offers the ability

The Godfather

Mario Puzo · 447 pages

The Godfather is a crime novel by American author Mario Puzo. Originally published in 1969 by G. P. Putnam's Sons, the novel details the story of a fictional Mafia family in New York City (and Long Beach, New York), headed by Vito Corleone. Puzo's dedication for The Godfather is "For Anthony Cleri". The novel's epigraph is by the French author Honoré de Balzac: "Behind every great fortune there is

East of Eden

John Steinbeck · 602 pages

Steinbeck considered East of Eden to be his masterpiece. In his journal, Journal of a Novel (often read as a companion to the novel) he notes that “this is the book I have always wanted and have worked and prayed to be able to write.” Set primarily in the Salinas Valley in the early twentieth century, the novel traces three generations of two families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – as they grapp

Cutting for Stone

Abraham Verghese · 670 pages

Cutting for Stone (2009) is a novel written by Ethiopian-born Indian-American medical doctor and author Abraham Verghese. It is a saga of twin brothers, orphaned by their mother's death at their births and forsaken by their father. The book includes both a deep description of medical procedures and an exploration of the human side of medical practices. When first published, the novel was on The

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende · 433 pages

"The unforgettable first novel that established Isabel Allende as one of the world's most gifted and imaginative storytellers. The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a

The Lives of Others

Neel Mukherjee · 516 pages

Calcutta, 1967. Unnoticed by his family, Supratik has become dangerously involved in extremist political activism. Compelled by an idealistic desire to change his life and the world around him, all he leaves behind before disappearing is this note… The ageing patriarch and matriarch of his family, the Ghoshes, preside over their large household, unaware that beneath the barely ruffled surface o

The Invisible Mountain

Carolina De Robertis · 364 pages

From the verdant hills of Rio de Janeiro to Evita Peron's glittering Buenos Aires, from the haven of a corner butcher shop to the halls of the United States Embassy in Montevideo, this gripping novel--at once expansive and lush with detail--examines the intertwined fates of a continent and a family in upheaval. The Invisible Mountain is a deeply intimate exploration of the search for love and aut

Generations of Winter

Vasily Aksyonov · 608 pages

Early Warning

Jane Smiley · 475 pages

Family patriarch Walter Langdon has died, and his children have fanned out across the country. The narrative moves year by year from 1953 to 1986, encompassing Cold War blinkeredness, Sixties rebellion, and escalating wealth into the Eighties.

Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone

Diana Gabaldon · 880 pages

The Forsyte Saga

John Galsworthy · 416 pages

Winter: A Berlin Family, 1899-1945

Len Deighton · 557 pages

The prelude to the classic spy trilogy, Game, Set and Match, that follows the fortunes of a German dynasty during two world wars. Winter takes us into a large and complex family drama, into the lives of two German brothers - both born close upon the turn of the century, both so caught up in the currents of history that their story is one with the story of their country, from the Kaiser's heyday th

Kane and Abel

Jeffrey Archer · 550 pages

Born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world, both men are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream.These two men — ambitious, powerful, ruthless — are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fuelled by their all-consuming hatred. Over 60 years and three generations, through war, marriage, fortune, and disaster, Kane and Abel battle for the

Burnt Shadows

Kamila Shamsie · 384 pages

A powerful, sweeping epic crossing generations, cultures and continentsIn a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders...August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes sw

The Glass Palace

Amitav Ghosh · 560 pages

Set in Burma during the British invasion of 1885, this masterly novel by Amitav Ghosh tells the story of Rajkumar, a poor boy lifted on the tides of political and social chaos, who goes on to create an empire in the Burmese teak forest. When soldiers force the royal family out of the Glass Palace and into exile, Rajkumar befriends Dolly, a young woman in the court of the Burmese Queen, whose love

Fall on Your Knees

Ann-Marie MacDonald · 510 pages

The Radetzky March

Joseph Roth · 320 pages

The preeminent chronicler of the deterioration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Joseph Roth is an author drawn to disputed borders whose work brilliantly maps a region once again in turmoil. With the cultural rediscovery of Mitteleuropa, Roth's territory - geographical and spiritual - is sharply back in focus. The Radetzky March, first published in 1932, is Joseph Roth's greatest literary achievem

The Toss of a Lemon

Padma Viswanathan · 619 pages

In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami is about to embark on a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some renown as an astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal. In keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a weak one, that he will die in his tenth year of marriage. De

Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Madeleine Thien · 480 pages

"In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. I was ten years old."Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations--those who lived through Mao's Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Squar

We, the Drowned

Carsten Jensen · 678 pages

Follows a century in the port town of Marstal on an island off the coast of Denmark, whose citizens' lives are indelibly shaped by forces ranging from wars and shipwrecks to taboo survival practices and forbidden passions.

The House of the Mosque

Kader Abdolah · 436 pages

Iran, 1969. In the house of the mosque, the family of Aqa Jaan has lived for eight centuries. The house teems with life, played out under the watchful eyes of the storks that nest on the minarets above. But this family will experience upheaval unknown to previous generations. For in Iran, political unrest is brewing. The shah is losing his hold on power; the ayatollah incites rebellion from his ex