A small-town melodrama.

To read Jeanette Winterson is to love her. Best known as the author of such provocative novels as Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Sexing the Cherry, the fierce, curious, brilliant British writer is winningly candid in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

In The Round House Louise Erdrich threads a gripping mystery and multilayered portrait of a community through a deeply affecting coming-of-age novel.

A shocking—and riveting—picture of life in modern India.

Tormented by the atrocities he witnessed while fighting in the Korean War, Frank Money, the central character of Toni Morrison's profound novel, returns to a racist America where there's little sanctuary for a deeply traumatized black veteran.

An expansive coming-of-age novel about a 15-year-old boy forced to survive on his own after his parents are sent to prison for robbing a bank.

An author hikes the trail to Oregon—and psychic peace.

A young woman. An old chess player. A life-changing meeting. In Jennifer duBois's astonishingly beautiful and brainy debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes (Dial), the causes in question are both personal and political.

After her marriage of 26 years fell apart, Olds wrote a book of poems that reads like a novel.

A family tries to find its footing.

Loss of innocence—sexual, of course, but also cultural and religious—is the subject of Ayad Akhtar's poignant American Dervish, set in a Muslim-American community in the early 1980s.

The story of a confused (is there any other kind?) teenager.

Sixteen-year-old Hazel faces terminal cancer with humor and pluck. But it isn't until she meets Augustus in a support group that she understands how to love or live fully.

An irresistible romp through Italy in the Technicolor era.

A young man runs for his life.