Fiction

People of the Book: A Novel

by Geraldine Brooks

"When an Australian rare-book conservator named Hanna Heath finds a butterfly wing, a salt crystal, a white hair, and bloodstains in the recently rediscovered Sarajevo Haggadah, a late-medieval illuminated codex of uncertain provenance, she sets out to solve the mystery of the book’s origins. To her disappointment, analysis of the specimens reveals little.... Brooks, beginning where science leaves off, uses Hanna’s finds as entry points to richly imagined historical landscapes peopled by the Haggadah’s creators, protectors, and would-be destroyers—a female Muslim slave in Convivencia Spain, a Jewish doctor in fin-de-siècle Vienna, an alcoholic priest in seventeenth-century Venice. Their narratives alternate with Hanna’s own, and the final, multilayered effect is complex and moving." —The New Yorker

Atlas of Unknowns

by Tania James

“A poignant, funny, blazingly original debut novel about sisterhood, the tantalizing dream of America, and the secret histories and hilarious eccentricities of families everywhere. ”
—from the Hardcover Edition

The Story Sisters

by Alice Hoffman

A family is shattered when one of three sisters dies tragically in an automobile accident. How the family survives--separates, reconfigures, and reconciles--is at the heart of this exquisite exploration of the ties that bind.

Steppenwolf

by Hermann Hesse

Hesse, in his most autobiographical book, is a man drunk on Nietzsche and Schopenhauerian pessimism, with an added dose of Eastern mysticism. This novel, written in 1927, contains savage indictments of conventional bourgeois morality and searching philosophic forays into the role of art, music and the independent, self-willed individual.

The Romantics

by Galt Niederhoffer

Laura and Lila were college roommates--one brooding and Jewish, the other the epitome of golden WASP-dom. Now it\'s ten years later, a day before Lila\'s wedding to Laura\'s former boyfriend, and as the guests arrive, Laura finds herself the only one not coupled up. Unfolding over two days off the coast of Maine, The Romantics follows the shifting allegiances among an unforgettable set of characters.

All the Living

by C.E. Morgan

A "New York Times Book Review" Editors\' Choice

Aloma is an orphan, raised by her aunt and uncle, educated at a mission school in the Kentucky mountains. At the start of the novel, she moves to an isolated tobacco farm to be with her lover, a young man named Orren, whose family has died in a car accident, leaving him in charge. The place is rough and quiet; Orren is overworked and withdrawn. Left mostly to her own, Aloma struggles to settle herself in this lonely setting and to find beauty and stimulation where she can. As she decides whether to stay with Orren, she will choose either to fight her way to independence or accept the rigors of commitment.

The Remains of the Day

by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day is a profoundly compelling portrait of the perfect English butler and of his fading, insular world in postwar England. At the end of his three decades of service at Darlington Hall, Stevens embarks on a country drive, during which he looks back over his career to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving "a great gentleman." But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington\'s "greatness" and graver doubts about his own faith in the man he served.

The News Where You Are

by Catherine O'Flynn

“This superbly written novel begins with deceptive simplicity and humor, and quietly blossoms into a precisely observed story about loss, aging, friendship, and reinvention. . . . [O’Flynn’s] writing has unmistakable authenticity, delicately balancing comedy and tragedy. It’s a difficult trick, one that she has mastered with impressive grace.”
—Diane White, The Boston Globe

The Assistant

by Robert Walser

“Swiss writer Walser (1878-1956) wrote this Kafka-esque novel in 1908. Joseph Marti, a 24-year-old clerk, comes to work and live in the home-office of inventor-entrepreneur Karl Tobler, a boor and practical incompetent. As business prospects dry up and investors lose interest, Joseph\'s job becomes a surreal parody of itself...”  —Publisher’s Weekly

Fall

by Colin McAdam

"This book tells a riveting story that breathlessly and beautifully swallows the reader, so there is the sensation of being in there and not just observing what happens. McAdam\'s style is perfect for his subject: the intensity of young love and the
intensity of self-hatred. Reading it is a marvelous experience." -Elizabeth Strout

Non Fiction