essential fiction

Discover the must-read books in essential fiction. Explore timeless classics and modern masterpieces that every book lover should have on their shelf.

The Quincunx Cover
Book

The Quincunx

by Charles Palliser

An extraordinary modern novel in the Victorian tradition, Charles Palliser has created something extraordinary—a plot within a plot within a plot of family secrets, mysterious …
The Book of Evidence Cover
Book

The Book of Evidence

by John Banville

Returning to Ireland to reclaim a painting that is part of his patrimony, a thirty-eight-year-old man commits a ghastly and motiveless murder, which he confesses …
The Butcher Boy Cover
Book

The Butcher Boy

by Pat McCabe

Telling the strange and sometimes hilarious tale of a deeply disturbed boy, a portrait of a dangerous mind profiles Francie, known in his repressive Irish …
Book Cover
Book

[No Title]

 

No summary available.
All the Pretty Horses Cover
Book

All the Pretty Horses

by Cormac McCarthy

John Grady Cole, 16, leaves Texas for Mexico in 1950 and becomes an essential vaquero in a hacienda's program.
Strong Motion Cover
Book

Strong Motion

by Jonathan Franzen

Strong Motion is a novel about earthquakes, love, the environment, and growing up. Louis Holland, a twenty-three-year- old whose irony and wounded idealism mark him …
Drowning Cover
Book

Drowning

by Lee Grove

Coming together after almost forty years, members of the Drowner family contemplate and reveal the shattering deceptions and betrayals that scarred their lives.
Murther & Walking Spirits Cover
Book

Murther & Walking Spirits

by Robertson Davies

Anthony Burgess listed Davies' The Rebel Angels among the 99 best novels of our time and declared that Davies himself is "without doubt Nobel Prize …
The Discovery of Heaven Cover
Book

The Discovery of Heaven

by Harry Mulisch

"Exhilerating, magnificent, dangerous." -- The Times Literary Supplement (London) One of the great novels of the Twentieth Century, described by John Updike as a meditation …
A Dream of Wessex Cover
Book

A Dream of Wessex

by Christopher Priest

No summary available.
Flicker Cover
Book

Flicker

by Theodore Roszak

Twice nominated for the National Book Award, Roszak has penned a superbly-crafted novel that's sure to entertain--and send chills up your spine. The author of …