When a lonely orchard tender shelters two young girls on the run from a cruel, vindictive pursuer, you'd expect some kind of romance to ensue. But in Amanda Coplin's lavish novel set in turn-of-the-last-century Washington State, another kind of love takes precedence—the kind that turns strangers into fellow saviors.

There's something irresistible about a morally complex story that makes you root for all its flawed characters, even when they're at odds with one another.

You don't have to know Seattle to get Maria Semple's broadly satirical novel, Where'd You Go, Bernadette.' '

The newest in a list of popular historical circus novels centers on two gifted young magicians who go from being rivals to lovers, despite the disapproval of their controlling mentors.

A young woman blossoms under loving care.

How one woman built an empire, but risked losing herself.

A novelist imagines the people's princess turning 50.

A fashion editor fights for custody of her daughter in this glamour-drenched guilty pleasure set in swinging London.

As the Great Recession batters even the best and the brightest, Harvard's class of 1989 gathers for a reunion in this timely and entertaining novel.

Whether adrift on the Atlantic in a leaky, overcrowded vessel or on trial for murder, Grace, the narrator of Charlotte Rogan's riveting debut novel knows how to take care of herself.

Delia Ephron's latest novel, The Lion Is In (Blue Rider), is a gentle fable that finds three women traveling on a dusty North Carolina highway, all desperately trying to escape something.

Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone is the enthralling story of two women—one famous, the other not; one drawn from history, the other mostly imagined—and how their unlikely relationship changed their lives.

Authors love to rewrite classics, but the result is usually parlor-game fiction, fun mainly for references to the original. A happy exception is Francesca Segal's good-natured The Innocents, which pays homage to but deviates in significant ways from its inspiration, Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence.

What does a woman in 21st-century London have to do with missionaries in 1920s China? Find out as this charming novel toggles between past and present.

A fascinating and wisely observant novel, set in the 1960s and the near future.

An irresistible romp through Italy in the Technicolor era.

In mid-20th-century Ireland, a good Catholic girl decides to give up her half-Jewish child for adoption.

A sweeping novel about Catherine the Great's ascent from young outsider to ruler of Russia, as told by a palace maid-and-spy who helped her rise to power.

Two hilarious novellas revel in the secret erotic exploits of seemingly conventional people. Who knew sex could be so funny?

In this irreverent comic novel of self-empowerment, the narrator tries to pattern herself after the hero of Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure classic.

Isn't it sad to be so privileged?

Deliciously dark and dangerous.

How being unseen can help you be heard.

A sitcom-ish tale of a mixed-race family obsessed with British royalty.

A sharp and funny romantic tale.

Asks the question many long-marrieds barely dare to contemplate.