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His Family
(Ernest Poole)Story of a sixty-year-old New York man who reflects on his life and the lives of his three daughters.
The Magnificent Amberson
(Booth Tarkington)The declining fortunes of three generations of the aristocratic Amberson family in an upper-scale Indianapolis neighborhood between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, a period of rapid industrialization and socioeconomic change.
Age of Innocence
(Edith Warton)Set among the very rich in 1870s New York, it tells the story of Newland Archer, a young lawyer engaged to marry virginal socialite May Welland, when he meets her cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, a woman unbound by convention and surrounded by scandal.
Alice Adams
(Booth Tarkington)A young woman who aspires to climb the social ladder and win the affections of a wealthy young man named Arthur Russell. The story is set in a lower-middle-class household in an unnamed town in the Midwest shortly after World War I.
One of Ours
(Willa Carther)Story of a Nebraska farm boy who dies fighting in France in World War I, took four years to write.
The Able MacLaughlins
(Margaret Wilson)Wully McLaughlin, doughty but inarticulate young hero, returns from Grant's army to find that his sweetheart, Christie McNair, has fallen a victim, against her will, to the scapegrace of the community, Peter Keith.
So Big
(Edna Ferber)Follows the life of a young woman, Selina Peake De Jong, who decides to be a school teacher in farming country. During her stay on the Pool family farm, she encourages the young Roelf Pool to follow his interests, which include art. Upon his mother's death, Roelf runs away to France.
Arrowsmith
(Sinclair Lewis)Story of bright and scientifically minded Martin Arrowsmith of Elk Mills, Winnemac (the same fictional state in which several of Lewis's other novels are set), as he makes his way from a small town in the Midwest to the upper echelons of the scientific community
Early Autumn
(Louis Bromfield)Olivia is almost 40 years old, and she increasingly feels trapped and stifled by her life. She and her husband have a loveless marriage (they have not shared rooms for years), and their son Jack is constantly ill.
The Bridge of San Luis Ray
(Thornton Wilder)In 1714 Peru, a friar is tried by the Inquisition for questioning God's intentions when five die in the collapse of an Andean rope bridge. In early 18th century Peru an old Inca rope bridge collapses, plunging five travelers to their deaths in the Andean chasm below.
Scarlet Sister Mary
(Juliea Peterkin)The story centers around a young black woman on a coastal South Carolina plantation who is abandoned by her husband and ostracized by her church for her sinful ways.
Laughing Boy
(Olivia LaFarge)Navajo, love, culture, individual conflict.
Years of Grace
(Margaret Ayer Barnes)A series of glimpses into the life of one woman as she follows the well-traveled path from a young romantic, to a college feminist, and finally to a married woman:
The Good Earth
(Pearl S. Buck)Wang Lung and his family's suffering as he works hard, endures famine and poverty, and eventually finds wealth. Also explores traditional values held by Wang Lung and how the next generation does not always feel the same way as the generation that came before it.
The Store
(T.S Stribling)Begins in 1884, when Grover Cleveland became the first Democratic president since the end of the Civil War, and it centers about the emergence of Colonel Miltiades Vaiden as a figure of wealth and power in the city of Florence.
Lamb In His Bosom
(Caroline miller)The story of what may be the unluckiest family in Georgia before the Civil War. Whether it's illness, stillbirth, gangrene, fire (twice), or even panther attack, it seems like everything that could go wrong, does.
Now in Novemeber
(Josephine Winslow Johnson)A white, middle-class urban family that is turned into dirt-poor farmers by the Depression and the great drought of the thirties.
Honey in the horn
(Harold S. Davis)Life in the homesteading days of an orphan boy named Clay Calvert as he grows up, but it is also about the trials of the pioneers who came to Oregon following the American Dream.
Gone WIth the Wind
(Margaret Mitchell)Story about civil war, starvation, rape, murder, heartbreak and slavery.
The Late George Apley
(John Philips Marquand)The novel moves from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression as it projects George Apley's world, and subtly reveals a life in which success and accomplishment mask disappointment and regret, a life of extreme and enviable privilege that is nonetheless an imperfect life.
The Yearling
(Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings)Centers on Jody's struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death of beloved friends, and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood.
The Grapes of Wrath
(John Steinbeck)The migration of a dispossessed family from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl to California and their subsequent exploitation by a ruthless system of agricultural economics.
In This Our LIfe
(Ellen Glasgow)The story of how two marriages are wrecked and a great wrong done to an innocent Negro boy, is told largely as it is viewed by Asa Timberlake, sixty years of age, husband of a hypochondriac wife, father of two daughters, one utterly selfish and feminine, the other courageous and gailant but confused and unhappy.
Dragon's Teeth
(Upton Sinclair)An American in Germany fights against the rising tide of Nazi terror in this monumental saga of twentieth-century world history. In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, Lanny Budd's financial acumen and his marriage into great wealth enable him to continue the lifestyle he has always enjoyed.
Journey In The Dark
(Martin Flavin)A story of a boy from Iowa who becomes a business tycoon at the price of his integrity.
A Bell For Adano
(John Hersey)Story of an Italian-American officer in Sicily during World War II who wins the respect and admiration of the people of the town of Adano by helping them find a replacement for the town bell, melted by the Fascists for steel.
All the King's Men
(Robert Penn Warren)Rise and fall of a political titan in the Deep South during the 1930s. Willie Stark rises from hardscrabble poverty to become governor of his state and its most powerful political figure
Tales of the South Pacific
(James A. Michener)About the lives of officers, nurses, a French expatriate, and natives on the islands of the South Pacific during World War II.
Guard of Honor
(James Gould Cozzens)The novel is set during World War II, with most of the action occurring on or near a fictional Army Air Forces base in central Florida. The action occurs during a period of approximately 48 hours.
The Way West
(A.B Guthrie Jr.)Former senator William Tadlock leads a wagon train along the Oregon Trail from Missouri with the help of hired guide Dick Summers.
The Town
(Conrad Ritcher)Third installment of trilogy The Awakening Land. The Trees and The Fields were the earlier portions of the series.
The Caine Mutiny
(Herman Wouk)Wouk's personal experiences aboard two destroyer-minesweepers in the Pacific Theater in World War II.
The Old Man and the Sea
(Ernest Hemingway)An old fisherman, Santiago, catches a large marlin that drags him out deep into the ocean. He finally kills it, but sharks, having smelled the blood, begin to eat it.
A Fable
(William Faulkner)The book takes place in France during World War I and stretches through the course of one week in 1918. Corporal Stephan orders 3,000 troops to disobey orders to attack in the brutally repetitive trench warfare.
Andersonville
(MacKinlay Kantor)Story of the notorious Georgia prison where 50,000 Northern soldiers suffered—and 14,000 died—and of the people whose lives were changed by the grim camp
A Death in the Family
(James Agee)Based on the events that occurred to Agee in 1915 when his father went out of town to see his own father, who had suffered a heart attack. During the return trip, Agee's father was killed in a car accident.
Travels of Jamie McFeeters
(Robert Lewis Taylor)The novel alternates between Jaimie describing his journey by wagon train and commentary by his father, a Scottish doctor with an effervescent personality whose judgment is often clouded by his weakness for gambling and strong drink.
Advise and Consent
(Jame Drury)Explores the United States Senate confirmation of controversial Secretary of State nominee Robert Leffingwell, whose promotion is endangered due to growing evidence—explored in the novel—that the nominee had been a member of the Communist Party.
To Kill a Mockingbird
(Harper Lee)Goes into racial biases present in America, and a trial of an unfairly charged black man.
The Edge of Sadness
(Edwin O'Connor)Father Hugh Kennedy, a recovering alcoholic, returns to Boston to repair his damaged priesthood. There he is drawn into the unruly world of the Carmodys, a sprawling, prosperous Irish family teeming with passion and riddled with secrets.
The Keepers of the House
(Shirley Ann Grau)Details seven generations of the Howland family, but the focus is primarily on two of them: the fifth William Howland and his granddaughter Abigail
Collected Short Stories
(Katherine Anne Porter)Explores themes of alienation, isolation, and the complete sacrifice of an individual for a loftier goal throughout different stories.
The Fixer
(Bernard Malamud)A Jewish handyman, or fixer, discovers that there is no rational reason for human cruelty.
The Confessions of Nat Turner
(William Styron)Nat led a slave rebellion which ended in the deaths of dozens of white people as well as many of his own closest friends. Thomas Gray, a smug, oily prosecuting attorney, urges Nat to "confess" his crimes and make peace with God. Nat begins to think back on his past life and tells the novel in a series of flashbacks.
House Made of Dawn
(N. Scott Nomady)A young Native American, Abel has come home from a foreign war to find himself caught between two worlds. The first is the world of his father's, wedding him to the rhythm of the seasons, the harsh beauty of the land, and the ancient rites and traditions of his people.
Collected Stories
Jean Stafford communicates the small details of loneliness and connection, the search for freedom and the desire to belong, that not only illuminate whole lives but also convey with an elegant economy of words the sense of the place and time in which her protagonists find themselves.
Angle of Response
(Wallace Stegner)A wheelchair-using historian, Lyman Ward, has lost connection with his son and living family and decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents.
The Optimist's Daughter
(Eudora Welty)Story of Laurel, a widow who returns to Mississippi when her father is ill and witnesses his death and funeral. From there, she embarks on a deeply personal journey to explore her past and her family in order to make sense of her future.
The Killer Angels
(Michael Shaara)Tells the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. On July 1, 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia, or Confederate army, and the Army of the Potomac, or Union army, fought the largest battle of the American Civil War. When the battle ended, 51,000 men were dead, wounded, or missing.
Humboldt's Gift
(Saul Bellow)The changing relationship of art and power in a materialist America. This theme is addressed through the contrasting careers of two writers, Von Humboldt Fleisher (to some degree a version of Schwartz) and his protégé Charlie Citrine (to some degree a version of Bellow himself).
Elbow Room
(James Alan McPherson)A beautiful collection of short stories that explores blacks and whites today, Elbow Room is alive with warmth and humor. Bold and very real, these twelve stories examine a world we all know but find difficult to define.
The Stories of John Cheever
(John Cheever)An autobiographical collection of tales from a man's life.Tthemes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters who embody opposites.
The Execuationer's Song
(Norman Mailer)Story of Gary Mark Gilmore, a lowlife thug who'd spent over half his life in prison before ruthlessly murdering two men while on parole. Instead of fighting his conviction on appeal, Gilmore forced the State of Utah's hand, essentially daring them to execute him.
A Confederacy of Dunces
(John Kennedy Toole)Ignatius Reilly is an overweight and unemployed thirty-year-old with a degree in Medieval History who still lives with his mother, Irene Reilly. He lives in utter loathing of the world around him, which he feels has lost the values of geometry and theology.
Rabbit is Rich
(John Updike)At forty-six, Rabbit is successful, but his expansive waistline reminds him of his declining energies as well as the encroachment of death.
The Color Purple
(Alice Walker)Tells the story of a 14 y/o illiterate black girl, and the struggles she faces in rural Georgia.
Ironweed
(WIlliam Kennedy)Set during the Great Depression. Tells the story of Francis Phelan, an alcoholic vagrant originally from Albany, New York, who left his family after accidentally killing his infant son while he may have been drunk.
Foreign Affairs
(Allison Lurie) Two professors of English literature at an Ivy League college on study leave in London. Vinnie Miner is a tenured professor, who specializes in children's literature. A 54 year old divorcee, she is convinced that her physical plainness will prevent her from ever experiencing true love.
Lonesome Dove
(Larry McMurtry)The relationships between several retired Texas Rangers and their adventures driving a cattle herd from Texas to Montana. Set in the closing years of the Old West, the novel explores themes of old age, death, unrequited love, and friendship.
Summons to Memphis
(Peter Taylor)The story of Phillip Carver, an adult who narrates events in his childhood that led to his present day situation. The biggest event was when he moved with his parents and siblings to Memphis at the age of thirteen.
Beloved
(Toni Morrison)Chronicles the life of a Black woman named Sethe, from her pre-Civil War days as a slave in Kentucky to her time in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873. Although Sethe lives there as a free woman, she is held prisoner by memories of the trauma of her life as a slave.
Breathing Lessons
(Anne Tyler)Describes the joys and pains of the ordinary marriage of Ira and Maggie Moran as they travel from Baltimore to attend a funeral and back home again in one day.
The Mambo King Plays Songs of Love
(Oscar Hijuelos)The lives of two Cuban brothers and musicians, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who immigrate to the United States and settle in New York City in the early 1950s.
Rabbit At Rest
(John Updike)Finishes up the Rabbit tetralogy, with retired Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom in Florida half the year and then back in Pennsylvania: the last year of Rabbit's life, it turns out. His son Nelson has become a cocaine addict and has run the family Toyota dealership irretrievably to ground.
A Thousand Acres
(Jane Smiley)Tells the story of King Lear, Shakespeare's tragedy about an aging king who plans to divide his kingdom among his three daughters. When King Lear's youngest daughter refuses to declare her unwavering love for him, he banishes her and bestows his kingdom on the wicked elder daughters, with dire consequences.
A Good Scent From a Strange Mountain
(Robert Olen Butler)Collection of lyrical and poignant stories about the aftermath of the Vietnam War and its enduring impact on the Vietnamese.
The Shipping News
(Anne Proulx)The story revolves around Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from upstate New York, whose father had emigrated from Newfoundland. Shortly after his parents' joint suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive wife, Petal Bear, leaves town with a lover and attempts to sell their daughters Bunny and Sunshine to sex traffickers.
The Stone Diaries
(Carol Shields)Fictional autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a seemingly ordinary woman whose life is marked by death and loss from the beginning, when her mother dies during childbirth. Through marriage and motherhood, Daisy struggles to find contentment, never truly understanding her life's true purpose.
Independence Day
(Richard Ford)Novel follows Frank Bascombe, a New Jersey real estate agent through the titular holiday weekend as he visits his ex-wife, his troubled son, his current lover, the tenants of one of his properties, and some clients of his who have been having trouble finding the perfect house.
Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer
(Steven Milhauser)Story of a young entrepreneur in late-nineteenth-century New York City whose ambition to make concrete an elusive dream leads to a fabulous creation that houses the imagination itself. Young Martin Dressler begins his career as a helper in his father's cigar store.
American Pastoral
(Philip Roth)Story of an all-American family man who watches his family crumble during the turbulent 1960s, when his daughter is accused of bombing the local post office in their staid town of Old Rimrock, New Jersey.
The Hours
(Michael Cunningham)Follows three women through one day in their lives. Draws inventively on the life and work of Virginia Woolf
Interpreter of Maladies
(Jhumpa Lahiri)A book collection of nine short stories, it chronicles a day during an Indian American family's vacation in India visiting tourist sites with their Indian guide
The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay
(Michael Chabon)The lives of two Jewish cousins, Czech artist Joe Kavalier and Brooklyn-born writer Sammy Clay, before, during, and after World War II.
Empire Falls
(Richard Russo)Taking place in a small town in Maine, tells the story of Miles Roby, the unassuming manager of the Empire Grill, who has spent his entire life in the town. He has an ex-wife, Janine, who has become a cocky, selfish bachelorette after losing weight and exercising rigorously.
Middlesex
(Jeffrey Eugenides)Story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit
The Known World
(Edward P Jones)Set in Virginia during the antebellum era, it examines the issues regarding the ownership of black slaves by both white and black Americans.
Gilead
(Marilynne Robinson)Told through one long letter, is an account of the memories and legacy of John Ames as he remembers his experiences of his father and grandfather to share with his son.
March
(Geraldine Brooks)Story of Captain March, the father of the infamous March daughters from Louisa May Alcott's classic novel Little Women, as he battles through the Civil War doing all he can to hold tightly to his morals while war ravages the country.
The Road
(Cormac McCarthy)Post-apocalyptic novel that details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life.
The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao
(Junot DIaz)Oscar is a Dominican-American who grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, and struggled his whole life to find community, a sense of identity, and, above all, love.
Olive Kitteridge
(Elizabeth Strout)The story follows the main heroine as she deals with the daily life of living in a small town in Crosby, Maine. As a high school math teacher, she is responsible for teach many of the children that live in the town, once they are old enough to attend high school age.
Tinkers
(Paul Harding)About the legacy of consciousness and the porousness of identity from one generation the next. Tells the stories of George Washington Crosby, an elderly clock repairman, and of his father, Howard. On his deathbed, George remembers his father, who was a tinker selling household goods from a donkey-drawn cart and who struggled with epilepsy.
A Visit From the Goon Squad
(Jennifer Egan)A book about the interplay of time and music, about survival, about the stirrings and transformations set inexorably in motion by even the most passing conjunction of our fates. Tells 13 unrelated stories.
The Orphan Master's Son
(Adam Johnson)Follows the misadventures of Jun Do, a North Korean man whose name is a homonym for John Doe. Jun Do is raised in an orphanage. He is the son of the orphanage director, who takes his shoes in winter and burns him with a shovel.
The Goldfinch
(Donna Tartt)13-year-old Theodore Decker survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum where his mother is killed. While staggering through the debris, he takes with him a small Dutch Golden Age painting called The Goldfinch.
All The Light We Cannot See
(Anthony Doerr)Traces the stories of three characters whose lives intersect during the bombing of the German-occupied French town of Saint-Malo in August 1944.
The Sympathizer
(Viet Thanh Nguyen)A half-French, half-Vietnamese man serving as a spy for the Communist forces in the final days of the Vietnam War. The novel is framed as a confession written by the narrator to a mysterious commandant, by whom he is being held prisoner.
The Underground Railroad
(Colson Whitehead)Chronicles the life of a teenage slave named Cora, who flees the Georgia plantation where she was born, risking everything in pursuit of freedom, much the way her mother, Mabel, did years before.
Less
(Andrew Sean Greer)A satirical comedy novel, follows writer Arthur Less while he travels the world on a literary tour to numb his loss of the man he loves.
