"The greatest writer of his time."-Edmund Wilson "One of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art"-Edgar Johnson "His characters are marvelous, his insights wonderful…you don't expect reality but you get something bigger and better."-Ruth Rendell The Old Curiosity Shop was initially published in a weekly serial, "Master Humphrey's Clock", between 1840 and 1841. Charles Dickens' story of the frail and innocent orphan had become such...

This “very remarkable novel”—first in the acclaimed Alexandria Quartet—tells a haunting story of love, desire, and deception in the Egyptian city pre-WWII (New York Herald Tribune Book Review).
 Set in Alexandria, Egypt, in the years between World Wars I and II, Justine is the first installment in the distinguished Alexandria Quartet. Here Lawrence Durrell crafts an exquisite and...

Rafael Yglesias’s novel of trauma, loss, and the bonds formed between victims of catastrophe.

Max Klein suffers from many anxieties—including a terrible fear of flying—but after surviving a plane crash his worries vanish and he suddenly believes himself invincible. Back home, a psychiatrist puts him in touch with Carla, a victim of the same crash who lost her infant son and suffers from a morbid, debilitating depression....

Considered the first true detective story Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone (1868) is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. Originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round, it introduced many hallmarks of detective fiction, including an English country house setting, bungling local policemen, and a large number of false suspects. In it, Rachel Verinder, a young English woman, inherits a large Indian diamond on her eighteenth birthday...

A pro softball player, an alcoholic husband, a drug deal out of town, and buried treasure—the postmodern and vibrantly pulpy debut novel from Hob Broun
The heroine of Odditorium is Tildy Soileau, a professional softball player stuck in a down-and-out marriage in South Florida. Leaving her husband to his own boozy inertia, she jumps at the chance to travel to New York with Jimmy Christo, only recently released from a mental institution,...

A story about the fairy-tale fantasies of girlhood and the realities of growing up by “one of our quirkiest and most interesting novelists” (Jane Smiley, USA Today).
When Teresa sleeps—sometimes for days at a time, the scent of roses surrounding her—she dreams of the Arias, outlaw riders on white steeds, who roam the desert at night. She was told about the dark-eyed horsemen by her mother, Dina, who left...

"The quintessential novel of the Lost Generation, The Sun Also Rises is one of Ernest Hemingway's masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. A poignant look at the disillusionment and angst of the post-World War I generation, the novel introduces two of Hemingway's most unforgettable characters : Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley. The story follows the flamboyant Brett and the hapless Jake as they journey from the...

"A literature professor tries to rediscover who she is after the sudden death of her husband, even as a series of family and political jolts force her to ask what we owe those in crisis in our families, biological or otherwise"--

Humphrey Van Weyden is thrown overboard while unsuccessfully investigating a smuggling ring. The ship' s formidable captain, Wolf Larsen puts Humphrey to a series of violent tests, but nothing can prepare Van Weyden for a final confrontation with Larsen himself.

From a writer whom the New York Times dubbed Canada’s “Generation X laureate” comes a quartet of haunting, unforgettable tales of young people stuck in the inescapable prison of family
A New York Times Notable Book and winner of Britain’s prestigious Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize, Traplines is the book that introduced the world to Canadian author Eden Robinson. In three stories and a novella, Robinson...