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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …


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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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 …

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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 …


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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 …