Set in twelfth-century England, this epic of kings and peasants juxtaposes the building of a magnificent church with the violence and treachery that often characterized the Middle Ages.

A famous legend surrounding the creation of Anna Karenina tells us that Tolstoy began writing a cautionary tale about adultery and ended up by falling in love with his magnificent heroine. It is rare to find a reader of the book who doesn't experience the same kind of emotional upheaval: Anna Karenina is filled with major and minor characters who exist in their own right and fully embody their mid-nineteenth-century Russian milieu, but it still belongs...

Dolores is a class-A emotional basket case, and why shouldn't she be? She's suffered almost every abuse and familial travesty that exists: Her father is a violent, philandering liar; her mother has the mental and emotional consistency of Jell-O; and the men in her life are probably the gender's most loathsome creatures.

A recovering alcoholic and addict down on her luck struggles to hold on to her home in California. But this becomes contested territory when a recent immigrant from the Middle East-a former colonel in the Iranian Air Force-becomes determined to restore his family's dignity through buying the house. When the woman's lover, a married cop, intervenes, he goes to extremes to win her love. Andre Dubus III's unforgettable characters-people with ordinary...

A Los Angeles girl whose mother goes to jail is taken in hand by the city's foster-care program and the novel describes her experience in a series of homes, each a new adventure. A first novel.

Sidney Poitier was the first black man to win the Academy Award in 1963. Among other accolades, Poitier has been awarded the Screen Actor Guild's highest honor, the Life Achievement Award, for an outstanding career and humanitarian accomplishment.

This sprawling and often brutal novel, set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley, follows the intertwined destinies of two families--the Trasks and the Hamiltons--whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Zulu pastor Stephen Kumalo travels to Johannesburg on an errand for a friend and to visit his son, Absalom, only to learn Absalom has been accused of murdering white city engineer and social activist Arthur Jarvis and stands very little chance of receiving mercy.

Set on the Caribbean coast of South America, this love story brings together Fermina Daza, her distinguished husband, and a man who has secretly loved her for more than fifty years.

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in...