A small-town melodrama.

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

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.

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.

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.