In Amor Towles's debut novel, Rules of Civility (Viking), post-Depression Manhattan—the glittering metropolis of cocktails, jazz clubs, and glamorous apartment towers guarded by knowing doormen—is also the city of profound reinvention.

Told through the lives of three women and their men, this novel, set during and after World War II, takes an intimate look at how we can be dismantled and rebuilt by changing times.

Freud famously asked, "What does woman want?" Too bad he never got to read these frank pieces about sex, all by female writers and edited by the Fear of Flying author, who nearly invented the topic.

Cultures clash, love blooms, and a teacher is murdered in this novel about a sheltered young woman in 1970s India teaching at a British-run boarding school.

A short and inspiring fable from an Italian novelist about an Afghan boy's harrowing emigration to Italy.

Two Jewish refugees escape the horrors of Hitler's Germany as children. They meet again in America, where they fall in love with their adopted country—and with each other.

This haunting story about middle-aged siblings explores the nature of art, obsession, and family ties.

An audacious, thoughtful call for people of all religions to move beyond hate, fear, and intolerance.

A bookish young woman + a mysterious older man + a crumbling farmhouse = a luscious mix of romance and gothic ghost story.

The all-true adventures of two Eastern debutantes who set out for Colorado in 1916—told by The New Yorker's executive editor, whose grandmother was one of them.

A literary thriller narrated by a surgeon suspected of killing her best friend. The twist: She has dementia and doesn't know if she did it.

How one wrong e-mail nearly toppled a family and a community.

A son revisits the sins of his father.

Forget vampires, chimps, even Jane Austen. The current trend—thank you, Water for Elephants—is novels about famous big tops of the past.' '

Here the heroine, Ana Swift, is a professional giantess, with her own gripes about life in the spotlight.

Watching your mother die is horrible enough. Watching her die because your father is denying her medical treatment is, for most of us, unimaginable. But not for Lucia Greenhouse, whose fathermothergod is as much an indictment of Christian Science as it is a memoir of her family's experience of loss.