"The Cider House Rules is filled with people to love and to feel for. . . . The characters in John Irving's novel break all the rules, and yet they remain noble and free-spirited."-The Houston Post
First published in 1985, The Cider House Rules is se... More details on The Cider House Rules
A child of Maine, Wilbur Larch was born in Portland in 186_—the son of a sullen, tidy woman who was among the staff of cooks and housekeepers for a man named Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland and the so...
"He is more than popular. He is a Populist, determined to keep alive the Dickensian tradition that revels in colorful set pieces…and teaches moral lessons."-The New York Times
The opening sentence of John Irving's breakout novel, The World According... More details on The World According to Garp
John Irving, a highly imaginative storyteller whose fictional values and narrative techniques have invited comparison with Charles Dickens and other popular nineteenth-century novelists, was born in E...
Half Apache and mostly orphaned, the adventures of Edgar Presley Mint begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head.
Shunted from the hospital to a reform school to a Mormon foster famil... More details on The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint
IF I COULD tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head. As formative events go, nothing else comes close; my careening, zigzag exist...
"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured."
So begins this epic, mesmerizing first no... More details on Shantaram
IT TOOK ME a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tor...
The New York Times bestselling saga of a most unusual family from the award-winning author of The World According to Garp.
"The first of my father's illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human ... More details on The Hotel New Hampshire
The summer my father bought the bear, none of us was born—we weren’t even conceived: not Frank, the oldest; not Franny, the loudest; not me, the next; and not the youngest of us, Lilly and Egg. My fat...
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
Once in a great while a writer comes along who can truly capture the drama and passion of the life of a family. David James Duncan, author of the novel The River Why and the collection River Teeth, is just such a writer... More details on The Brothers K
In A Widow for One Year, we follow Ruth Cole through three of the most pivotal times in her life: from her girlhood on Long Island (in the summer of 1958) through the fall of 1990 (when she is an unmarried woman whose personal life is not nearly as s... More details on A Widow for One Year
A salesgirl who was also a waitress had been found dead in her apartment on Jarvis, south of Gerrard. It was an apartment within her means, but only because she had shared it with two other salesgirls...
The #1 New York Times bestselling novel that introduced Khaled Hosseini to millions of readers the world over.
"A vivid and engaging story that reminds us how long his people [of Afghanistan] have been struggling to triumph over the forces of violenc... More details on The Kite Runner
I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the fro...
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.
An American classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, A Separate Peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country w... More details on A Separate Peace
I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before. It seemed more sedate than I remembered it, more perpendicular and ...
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"Russo writes with a warm, vibrant humanity…. A stirring mix of poignancy, drama and comedy." -The Washington Post
Welcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned mills whose citizens surround themselves wit... More details on Empire Falls
THE EMPIRE GRILL was long and low-slung, with windows that ran its entire length, and since the building next door, a Rexall drugstore, had been condemned and razed, it was now possible to sit at the ...