Vintage and Anchor Books have designed Reading Group Guides to enhance a group's reading and discussion of a book. They include a description of each book, questions, discussion topics, and author biographies. From fiction to memoir, award winners to bestsellers, we've got books and reading group guides for every interest!


Still having trouble picking a selection? We've put together a list of books that we think are terrific for discussion. Go ahead and browse--you might just find the perfect book to spice up your current Reading Group schedule or discover a new title that will lead your book club into new and exciting territory.

Don't forget to use our Discussion Resources for fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and poetry as the launching point for your discussion.

A-C | D-F | G-I | J-L | M-O | P-R | S-U | V-Z

  • Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point by David Lipsky
    National Bestseller
    A riveting account of Lipsky's four years serving as West Point's own embedded journalist, Absolutely American follows a class of cadets as they move from their proving grounds to their barracks. With a new epilogue, including updates on graduates who went on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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  • Against Love: A Polemic by Laura Kipnis
    Accosted by a man one afternoon in Riverside Park, a young grad student talks her way out of the situation, but after he lets her go she is unable to shake the disturbing memories. Her path to recovery will take her as far as the Phillipines to discover how to take back her life.
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  • And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II by Evelyn M. Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee
    In World War II, 59,000 women voluntarily risked their lives for their country as U.S. Army nurses, yet for more than half a century these women's experiences have remained untold. After years of research and hundred of hours of interviews Monahan and Neidel-Greenlee at last bring to light the critical role women played throughout the war.
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  • And Now You Can Go: A Novel by Vendela Vida
    "Will all the adulterers in the room please stand up?" So begins Laura Kipnis's provocative and entertaining Against Love--a book that dares to challenge our tightly held beliefs on the nature of that most sacred of emotions and its role in our society.
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  • Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
    by H. W. Brands

    National Bestseller
    In the first major single-volume biography of Andrew Jackson in decades, H. W. Brands reshapes our understanding of this fascinating man and the Age of Democracy that he ushered in. Brands re-creates Johnson's rise from meager roots all the way to the White House, proving that the presidency was not the exclusive province of the wealthy and well-born.
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  • Angels Crest by Leslie Schwartz
    Ethan Denton has just been granted custody of his three-year-old son when he takes him up to Angels Crest one morning to show him the mountains. In an impulsive decision, Ethan leaves his son for a minute in the back seat while he follows a pair of buck. When he returns to the car, his son is gone, and snow is falling . . .
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  • The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock
    Dennis Bock's universally acclaimed novel brilliantly describes the bombing of Hiroshima, its aftermath, and the devastating effect it had on three individual lives.
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  • Babyji: A Novel by Abha Dawesar
    AN ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL
    Anamika Sharma is a spirited young woman growing up in Delhi, confronting questions beyond her years. At school she is a brilliant student; at home she sneaks off to read the Kamasutra. Dawesar's debut novel presents one of the most provocative and charming heroines in contemporary fiction.
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  • Baghdad Diaries: A Woman's Chronicle of War and Exile by Nuha al-Radi
    A moving account of life in Baghdad during the first war on Iraq, Iraqi artist Nuha al-Radi's diary offers a rare glimpse at the day-to-day reality of life lived in wartime.
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  • Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
    National Bestseller
    Witnessed by a throng of gaping onlookers, a Marine sargent is murdered under a Bangokok bridge. Among the spectators are the only two cops in the city not on the take, and within minutes one is dead and the other is ready for revenge. But his quest for vengeance will bring him into the darkest parts of the city and a world more sinister than he could imagine.
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  • Blood on the Moon by James Ellroy
    Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins is a thinking man's cop with a dark past and an obsessive drive to hunt down criminals. Now he's on the case of a series of gruesome murders of women, and he'll risk everything to catch the killer.
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  • Break, Blow, Burn
    Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems

    National Bestseller
    Amereica's mosts provocative intellectual brings her blazing powers of analysis and appreciation to bear on the great poems of the Western tradition. Her take on poets from Shakespeare to Plath refreshes our understanding at the same time that it breaks new ground.
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  • Casanova in Bolzano by Sándor Márai
    When Giacomo Casanove escapes from a Venetian prison and resurfaces in the Italian village of Bolzano, he receives an unwelcome visitor. The duke of Parma has intercepted a love letter from his wife to Casanova, and now the duke makes him a startling offer--as perverse as it is irresistible.
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  • Claire Marvel by John Burnham Schwartz
    From the moment they meet in the middle of a rainstorm, Julian Rose and Claire Marvel share a deep, all-consuming passion. As their tumultuous love affair winds along its course, Schwartz exposes the pain and heartache of modern day romance with spare, elegant prose.
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  • Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq by Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor
    National Bestseller
    Written by the chief military correspondent of The New York Times and a prominent retired Marine general, this is the definitive account of the invasion of Iraq. In riveting detail Gordon and Trainor provide firsthand accounts of the high-level planning behind the scenes and show how the American rush to Baghdad provided the opportunity for the virulent insurency that followed.
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  • The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote
    This landmark collection brings together Truman Capote's life's work in the form he called his "great love." Including a never-before-published work, "The Bargain," these stories range from the gothic South to the chic East Coast, featuring all the unforgettable people and places in between.
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  • The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert
    Drawing on the fictional stories of three separate individuals--from the onset of World War II to the present--Rachel Seiffert's internationally acclaimed debut probes the modern German psyche by analyzing the effects of war from a personal perspective.
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  • Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
    Meet Dexter Morgan. He's charming. He's handsome. He has a respectable job. And he's a serial killer who only targets bad people. When a series of brutal murders mimicking his own style start turning up, Dexter finds himself torn for the first time--between flattery and fear.
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  • The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions by Helen Prejean
    After reopening the debate on the death penalty in her bestselling Dead Man Walking, Helen Prejean takes on the debate's moral edge and asks: What if we're executing innocent people? Focusing on the true stories of two men on death row, Prejean brilliantly challenges the arguments justifying the death penalty and shows why its application has more to do with race, poverty, and politics.
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  • Devices and Desires by P. D. James
    National Bestseller
    Commander Adam Dalgliesh has just published a book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland in a windmill left to him by his aunt. But escape is not so easy, and he finds himself caught up in the search for a dangerous killer.
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  • A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips
    PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
    A retired schoolteacher and an immigrant from an unnamed country in Africa meet and fall in love, each with their own devastating secrets. Intimate and panoramic, A Distant Shore retraces the paths that led them to this point and probes the emotional expanses that keep people apart.
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  • Do You Believe?: Conversations on God and Religion by Antonio Monda
    Some of the most well-known and well-respected cultural figures of our time--from Toni Morrison to David Lynch--enter into intimate and illuminating conversation about their personal beliefs, about belief itself, about religion, and about God.
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  • The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell
    On the Swedish coastline, two dead bodies are discovered in a life raft. With no witnesses, no motives, and no crime scene, Detective Kurt Wallander once again finds himself working a baffling case.
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  • Don't Play in the Sun: One Woman's Journey Into the Color Complex by Marita Golden
    Warned by her mother as a child to stay out of the sun for fear of darkening her skin, Marita Golden learned as a young girl that she was the wrong color. In this provocative book--part memoir, part searing analysis--Golden exposes the many facets of "colorism" and their affect on American culture today.
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  • The Ecstatic: A Novel by Victor LaValle
    Anthony James weighs 315 pounds, is probably schizophrenic, has just been kicked out of college, and has three women in his life who are trying to rescue him. But when he sets out with his mother, sister, and grandmother for his sister's latest beauty pageant, family relationships are put to the test--with darkly comic results.
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  • Exuberance: The Passion for Life by Kay Redfield Jamison
    With the same grace and breadth of learning she brought to her studies of the mind's pathologies, Kay Redfield Jamison examines one of the mind's most exalted states, and one that is crucially important to learning, risk-taking, social cohesiveness, and survivial itself.
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  • Faithful by Davitt Sigerson
    After a two-month whirlwind romance, Nick and Trish married. They seem perfectly compatible--from their ambitions to their sexual appetites--until Trish's past rears its head and forces her to make a choice that will change their lives in unforeseeable ways.
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  • Family Circle: The Boudins and the Aristocracy of the Left by Susan Braudy
    Based on extensive interviews, court documents, and family papers, Family Circle is a rich biography of a prominent liberal family and an intimate window into a turbulent and fascinating time.
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  • The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell
    In an African convent, four nuns and an unidentified fifth woman are brutally murdered. A year later, two additional murders are testing Inspector Wallander's strength and patience, and the the only way to solve them might be to find the link between the cases.
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  • The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
    Rowland Mahler teaches creative writing at the disreputable finishing school that he and his wife own while he works, falteringly, on his novel. When one of his students presents her historical novel-in-progress that has already excited the interest of publishers, a game of cat and mouse ensues fraught with jealousy and attraction.
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  • Firewall by Henning Mankell
    Inspector Kurt Wallander finds himself in charge of two mind-boggling cases: one involving a dead body discovered at an ATM and another in which two teenage girls are arrested for a brutal murder. A sneaking suspicion leads Wallander to believe the two are related, and he is drawn into a world-wide hi-tech conspiracy beyond his wildest imagination.
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  • 44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith
    All of Alexander McCall Smith's trademark wit and warmth come into play in this novel chronicling the lives of the residents of an Edinburgh boarding house. Complete with colorful characters, love triangles, and even a mysterious art caper, this is an unforgettable portrait of Edinburgh society.
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  • A Friend From England by Anita Brookner
    In this exquisite story of friendship and duty, sensible and responsible bookshop owner Rachel Kennedy becomes a mentor to Heather, the daughter of a long-time acquaintance. When Heather seems poised to make an unsuitable romantic decision, Rachel decides to step in, unexpectedly causing an unwitting and devastating insight.
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  • Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial, and Overcoming Anorexia edited by Kate Taylor
    An Anchor Original
    In this groundbreaking collection, nineteen writers describe their eating disorders from the distance of recovery, exposing as never before the anorexic's inner world.
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  • A Good Year by Peter Mayle
    The irresistible Peter Mayle is back with an intoxicating novel about the business and pleasure of wine, set in his beloved Provence. Max Skinner has recently lost his London job when he learns that he has inherited his late uncle's vineyard in Provence. Unfortunately he realizes the wine produced there is swill, so why are so many people interested in the property?
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  • The Great Game: The Myths and Reality of Espionage by Frederick P. Hitz
    In this riveting insider's account, a former inspector general of the CIA compares actual espionage cases with classic and popular spy fiction. Hitz shows that no matter how detailed or imaginative, writers inevitably fail to capture the profound human dilemmas raised by real-life cases.
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  • Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories by Alice Munro
    National Bestseller
    Short story master Alice Munro achieves new heights in this tenth collection--her first since the award-winning, bestselling The Love of a Good Woman. Here are complicated and contradictory true-to-life characters, making life-changing discoveries and surprising themselves and others in unexpected ways.
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  • Her by Laura Zigman
    Elise meets Donald on a flight to Washington, D.C., and it's love at first sight. Before Elise knows it they're discussing wedding invitations and everything is going well until she meets her--Donald's stunning ex-fiancée. Convinced Adrienne is out to win Donald back, Elise begins stalking them...with hilarious results.
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  • Hidden Power by Kati Marton
    In a behind-the-scenes look at twelve presidential marriages, Kati Marton uncovers the dynamics of these ultimate power couples, exposing the remarkable influence first ladies have had on virtually every aspct of government.
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  • His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
    The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Founding Brothers brings his trademark exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose to this landmark biography of our first president. Bringing the towering historical figure to life, Ellis assesses Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose cool exterior masked volcanic energies and emotions.
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  • I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story by Rick Bragg
    National Bestseller
    Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Bragg lends his remarkable narrative skills to the story of Jessica Lynch, as she sets the record straight about her capture and rescue in Iraq and fills in other details about her life, such as how her rural upbringing led her to a military career.
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  • In the Land of No Right Angles by Daphne Beal
    A twenty-year-old American student traveling in Nepal does a favor for a friend and helps a young Nepali woman eager to flee the constraints of family and tradition. But soon the three are embroiled in a strange triangle, with far-ranging and unforseen implications.
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  • Incendiary by Chris Cleave
    In this stunning debut novel, a massive suicide bomb explodes at a London soccer match, killing one woman's husband and son. But the bombing is only the beginning of her story. In a voice alive with grief, compassion, and startling humor, this is the remarkable tale of one life blown apart by terror.
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  • Jennifer Government by Max Barry
    In a future where taxation has been abolished, government has been privatized, and employees take the surname of the companies they work for, fighting crime means fighting consumerism and marketing hype. Even Jennifer Government has to rustle up funding before she can go after the bad guys, and her patience is wearing thin.
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  • Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Lyman Bushman
    In this cultural biography of Mormonism's founder, Richard Bushman, esteemed cultural historian and practicing Mormon, moves beyond the popular stereotype of Joseph Smith as a colorful fraud to explore his personality, his relationships with others, and how he received revelations.
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  • Lake Effect by Rich Cohen
    Rich Cohen's memoir of growing up in an affluent suburb on the North Shore of Chicago is a bittersweet coming-of-age story that bores to the essence of friendship.
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  • The Lake, the River, & the Other Lake by Steve Amick
    Steve Amick's moving yet comic novel chronicles the lives of residents and visitors to the resort town of Weneshkeen, Michigan. As he interweaves their stories, complete with the struggles and triumphs of everyday life, Amick creates a resonant social comedy filled with quirky charm.
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  • The Language of Baklava by Diana Abu-Jaber
    Diana Abu-Jaber's vibrant memoir weaves together stories of her food-obsessed Jordanian father with tales of cookouts and other culinary adventures. It is a heart-warming story about family and about immigrants who cook to remember their heritage while passing it along to their children.
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  • The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch
    Exposing an outright scandal in education, Diane Ravitch reveals how the good intentioons of textbook publishers and state education agencies seeking to root out racist, sexist, and elitist language in classroom and library materials have gone horribly awry, resulting in watered-down texts devoid of meaning and vitality.
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  • Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books by Maureen Corrigan
    In this delightful memoir, NPR's Fresh Air book critic muses on her life as an obsessive reader. With warmth and humor, she reveals which books and authors have shaped her life--from classic works to hard-boiled detective novels. And through her exploration of literary history, Corrigan's love for a good story shines.
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  • Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography by William Lee Miller
    A fresh and engaging telling of the story of Lincon's rise to power, Lincoln's Virtues is a major contribution to the discussion of the relationship between politics and ethics.
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  • Little Black Book of Stories by A. S. Byatt
    The Booker Prize-winning author of Possession breathes new life into the genre of fairy tales with a collection of thrilling and magical stories.
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  • Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism by Thomas L. Friedman
    Thomas L. Friedman, bestselling author of From Beirut to Jerusalem and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, received his third Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for "his clarity of vision, based on extensive reporting, in commenting on the worldwide impact of the terrorist threat." This collection of incisive commentary supplemented with a diary of his private experience and personal reflection, provides an indispensible resource for understanding today's new world and America's place in it.
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  • A Love of My Own by E. Lynn Harris
    National Bestseller
    When Zola Denise Norwood meets a media mogul on a New York-bound flight, he makes her several offers before they even land. Now she's realizing her dream of editing an urban magazine, but can she keep her relationship with the company's CEO purely professional?
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  • Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk
    A culling song is an African lullaby, sung to give painless death to the old or infirm. But when Carl Streator discovers one in a children's anthology and that readers across the country are accidentally using it, he embarks on a desperate trek with an unlikely band of misfits to save the nation from certain disaster.
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  • Magic Seeds: A Novel by V. S. Naipaul
    Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul's Magic Seeds continues the story of Willie Chandran, the perennially dissatisfied protagonist of his bestselling Half a Life. Having left a wife and livelihood in Africa, Willie returns to his native India to join an underground movement on behalf of the oppressed lower classes. Instead, he finds himself hunted by the police and spurned by those he is trying to help.
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  • Making Things Better: A Novel by Anita Brookner
    Facing life alone at an advanced age, Julius Herz senses that he is meant for something better than his lifetime of deferring to other people's wills. Now, with the possiblities at once overwhelming and exhilarating, he embarks on an exploration of the quandries of aging, longing, and self-discovery.
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  • Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
    National Bestseller
    The most authoritative account of the life of the Chinese leader ever written, Mao is based on ten years of research and full of startling new revelations, exploding the myth of the Long March and showing a completely unknown side to the infamous leader.
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  • The Master of Rain: A Novel of Shanghai by Tom Bradby
    Richard Field, newly appointed to the international police, is called to investigate the murder of a prostitute, and quickly finds himself submerged in the dark seedy underworld of 1926 Shanghai. The searing story that unfolds will test his wits and propel him toward a dangerous confrontation with the city's most ruthless gangster.
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  • Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta
    Pulitzer Prize Finalist
    From the comfort of your living room, travel with Suketu Mehta to the heart of India as he gives an insider's view of this stunning metropolis. From the criminal underworld to the inner sanctums of Bollywood, Mehta mixes first-hand accounts from inhabitants with personal experience to create a candid and heartrending glimpse into this ever-changing world.
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  • Men and Cartoons: Stories by Jonathan Lethem
    A boozy ex-military captain trapped in a mysterious vessel searches for his runaway son, an aging superhero settles into academia, and a professional "dystopianist" receives a visit from a suicidal sheep. In eleven fantastical, amusing, and moving stories, Lethem shows a remarkable range of vision and style.
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  • A Misalliance by Anita Brookner
    After the failure of her twenty-year marriage, Blanche Vernon believes that her husband left her because of her overly sesible demeanor. But many of their mutual friends disagree, and she has come to be regarded as an increasingly unpredictable eccentric. In an effort to fill her time, Blanche turns her energy to good works, and becomes enmeshed in the life of a disordered young family.
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  • Mozart and Leadbelly by Ernest J. Gaines
    In this collection of short stories and essays, the beloved author of the classic, bestselling novel A Lesson Before Dying shares the inspirations behind his books and his reasons for becoming a writer. In simple, powerful prose, these pieces comprise a revelation of both man and artist.
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  • The Mulberry Empire by Philip Hensher
    With Tolstoyan sweep and Dickensian vitality, this epically involving historical novel relates England's tragic adventure in Afghanistan, which began with the triumphant arrival of the Army of the Indus in 1839 and ended three years later in rout and massacre. At the heart of the story is a Scots explorer--just one of a colorful cast of ladies and generals, princes and deserters.
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  • A Multitude of Sins by Richard Ford
    National Bestseller
    In this masterful collection of short stories, one of our most celebrated chroniclers of modern life explores the grand themes of intimacy and love and the human failures at each.
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  • My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme
    National Bestseller
    Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Her unforgettable story of how she discovered her passion for cooking is made all the more rich within the context of her nearly fifty-year marriage and the indomitable spirit that drove her to success.
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  • My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk
    National Bestseller
    Part mystery, part love story, and part symposium on the power of art, My Name is Red is the story of a group of acclaimed artists, commissioned by the sultan to create a book celebrating the glories of his realm. But when one artist disappears, the onyl clue to the mystery--or crime--is in the unfinished illuminations themselves.
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  • Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives by Anna Fels
    Despite the huge advances women have made in recent decades, their ambitions are still undermined in subtle ways. Fels brilliantly examines how modern women must continually reshape their goals and expectations regarding ambition in order to articulate and fulfill their dreams.
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  • The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 edited by Laura Furman
    Hailed by The Atlantic Monthly as "the nation's most prestigious awards for short fiction," The O. Henry Prize Stories 2006 showcases a wide range of new and established literary talent. Prize jury: Kevin Brockmeier, Francine Prose, Colm Tóibín.
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  • Only in London by Hanan al-Shaykh
    Four Arab immigrants meet on a turbulent flight from Dubai to London, each with their own personal agenda and in search of the freedoms promised by a new life in Britain. Through the city and across cultural borders, their lives intertwine with humorous and unforgettable results.
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  • Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott
    National Bestseller
    The acclaimed author of Bird by Bird and Traveling Mercies narrates her personal journey through the joys and sorrows of her son's first year--from receiving support from friends and strangers to dealing with the devastating news that a loved one would die of cancer. Uncensored and uncut, Lamott's voice resonates for all women.
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  • Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems At Any Level by Sally Shaywitz, M.D.
    International Dyslexia Foundation Book Award Winner
    In Overcoming Dyslexia, Dr. Sally Shaywitz offers the latest information about reading problems and proven, practical techniques that, along with hard work and the right help, can enable anyone to overcome them. Here are the tools that parents and teachers need to help the dyslexic child, age by age, grade by grade, step by step.
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  • The Pecking Order: A Bold New Look At How Family and Society Determine Who We Become by Dalton Conley
    Acclaimed sociologist Dalton Conley shatters our notions of childhood in this groundbreaking book. Moving beyond theories such as birth order and genetics, The Pecking Order prompts a reexamination of the role of family--and the social forces that shape
    it--in making us who we are.
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  • Port Mungo by Patrick McGrath
    From the author of Asylum, comes this spellbinding narrative about the obsessive pursuit of art and love. In a seedy river town on the Gulf of Honduras, Jack Rathbone believed he had found the perfect place where he and his lover could create a body of work that would shake the art world to its core. But the frontier they encounter is even more fearsome than their physical surroundings.
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  • The Rock by Kanan Makiya
    A narrative of mythic power, The Rock weaves together stories, legends, and beliefs to consider the disputed history of one of the world's most spiritually resonant and politically contentious sites--the Rock of Jerusalem.
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  • The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham
    Here is Maugham's greatest and most enduring popular novel which traces the encounters and adventures of Larry Darrell, an attractive young American who forsakes the comforts of bourgeois society to pursue a life of truth and meaning.
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  • The Rottweiler by Ruth Rendell
    From master of suspense and Edgar Award-winning author Ruth Rendell comes a transfixing tale about the mind of a psychopath. The nickname came from the first victim, who had bite marks on her neck, and when "the Rottweiler's" souvenir trinkets start showing up in a London antique shop, everyone seems to be a suspect.
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  • The Rules of Engagement by Anita Brookner
    Elizabeth and Betsy had been school friends in 1950s London, but the years took their lives in separate directions until they reconnect later in life. From the Booker Prize-winning author of Hotel du Lac comes this brilliant assessment of the resilience of a friendship tested by alienation and jealousy.
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  • Self's Punishment by Bernhard Schlink and Walter Pop
    A former Nazi prosecutor turned private investigator has never forgotten his complicity in evil. Now, he has been hired for a case involving a prankish hacker targeting a chemical plant. The investigation leads to murder and into the dark recesses of Germany's past.
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  • A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin
    It is 1947, and the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now ninety-three, lives a quiet lilfe in a remote Sussex farmhouse. But as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that just might teach him something new about life, love, and the limits of the mind.
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  • The Small Boat of Great Sorrows by Dan Fesperman
    Vlado Petric, a former homicide detective in Sarajevo, is now living in exile and making a meager living when he is recruited to return home on a mission for the International War Crimes Tribunal. But the simple assignment of capturing an aging Nazi collaborator turns sour, and Petric is soon immersed in a dangerous labyrinth of secrets and stolen gold.
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  • The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel The bestselling author of A Girl Named Zippy delivers a powerful first novel that is at once a romance and a meditation on grief and faith. Langston Braverman and Amos Townsend are both caught in their own patterns of life until they are unexpectedly drawn together by two little girls whose need for love and security transcends everything else.
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  • Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
    A master explicator of our civilization and its discontents turns his attention to the insatiable quest for status. Proposing that this quest has more to do with love than material comfort, de Botton ranges through Western history and thought to prove his theory.
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  • Suspect by Michael Robotham
    London psychiatrist Joseph O'Loughlin has a beautiful wife, and adoring daughter, and a thriving practice. But he's also facing a future dimmed by Parkinson's disease. And when he's called into a murder investigation--the victim of which is someone he once knew--O'Loughlin tells one small lie that turns out to be the biggest mistake of his life.
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  • The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea by Mark Haddon
    The poems in this original collection from the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time reveal the gifts of a "clever and observant" (The Washington Post Book World) writer who displays "rare gifts of empathy" (Ian McEwan).
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  • The Tenth Muse: My LIfe in Food by Judith Jones
    From the legendary cookbook author who brought such culinary icons as Julia Child, James Beard, and Lidia Bastianich to American audiences comes this engrossing memoir. Includes the author's favorite personal recipes and tips.
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  • There Are Jews in My House: Stories by Lara Vapnyar
    In her striking debut collection, Lara Vapnyar traces the lives and aspirations of Russians living in Moscow and Brooklyn, spanning from the Second World War to present day.
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  • 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley
    From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres comes a unique celebration of the novel. Taking readers on an exhilarating tour through one hundred works of literature, Smiley explores the cultural and historical power of this art form and supplements the analysis with her own tips and advice to aspiring writers.
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  • Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote edited by Gerald Clark
    These private letters of Truman Capote, loving assembled for the first time by acclaimed biographer Gerald Clark, provide an intimate portrait of one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic literary figures. Here is the true Capote--chatty, witty, spontaneous, and passionate.
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  • A Trial by Jury by D. Graham Burnett
    Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett's account of his experience serving as foreman on a jury is both a riveting read and a nuanced examination of the legal system and the average citizen's place in it.
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  • Trouble: Stories by Patrick Somerville
    A Vintage Original
    Patrick Somerville's first collection of short stories offers an outrageously funny glimpse into life for the American male. From the boy who takes the matter of his reticent hormones into his own hands to the man whose life is turned upside down when he sees his bride-to-be kissing her boss, these are tales that combine with and truth, grace and humility.
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  • True Notebooks: A Writer's Year at Juvenile Hall by Mark Salzman
    When bestselling author Mark Salzman paid a visit to a writing class at L.A.'s Central Juvenile Hall--a lockup for teenage violent offenders--he did so reluctantly. But what he found so moved him that he began teaching there regularly, helping the boys find their own voices and come to terms with their pasts.
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  • Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks
    National Bestseller
    In this beautifully written memoir, the man who became a neurologist and one of our finest science writers tells the story of a remarkable family and a childhood enchanted by the wonders of science.
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  • The Warlord's Son by Dan Fesperman
    Skelly, a jaded war correspondent in Afghanistan, is looking for one last scoop. He joins up with Najeeb, a translator with his own secret past, and the two stumble onto the story of a lifetime when they join a warlord's caravan. But this dangerous world of shifting allegiances and sudden betrayals might just become their final story.
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  • Waxwings by Jonathan Raban
    Set in Seattle in 1999, Waxwings tells the stories of two immigrants--one legal, the other not--whose paths converge through a series of extraordinary but chillingly plausible events. Brilliantly capturing the human predicament in modern times, this novel is a major achievement.
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  • A Way from Home by Nancy Clark
    In 1992, the Lowe family seems a happy American family lilving abroad--Alden Lowe works at the Czech Ministry of Finances, and his wife Becky advises women entrepreneurs. But after twenty years of marriage, Becky sends shockwaves through their relationship when she flees to Libya, intending to reunite with an old admirer.
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  • What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir by E. Lynn Harris
    National Bestseller
    With courage and insight, E. Lynn Harris tells his life story--from a childhood marked by poverty and abuse to constant struggles with self-esteem and depression, eventually triumphing through faith and the support of his family to live the life of his dreams.
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  • The White Russian: A Novel of St. Petersburg by Tom Bradby
    In this riveting thriller, sandro Ruzsky, the city's chief police investigator, returns to St. Petersburg from exile in Siberia only to be assigned to a grisly case: the bodies of a young couple found on the ice of the frozen river Neva, just outside the Tsar's Winter Palace.
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  • Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns: Stories by J. California Cooper
    This irresistible collection of short stories from the bestsellign author of The Wake of the Wind explores the themes of romance, family, and the hopes that propel people's dreams. Wise and intimate, they are moving parables of the human need to seek satisfaction.
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  • Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender
    In Aimee Bender's collection of short stories, a boy with keys for fingers becomes a hero, a woman's children are potatoes, and a boy with an iron for a head is born to a family of pumpkin heads. With her singular mix of surrealism and keenly felt emotion, Bender proves herself again to be a master chronicler of the human condition.
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  • A Woman's Education: The Road from Coorain Leads to Smith College by Jill Ker Conway
    The bestselling author of True North continues her remarkable autobiography with an account of her decade as the first woman president of Smith College. Showing true strength and courage, Conway battled to equip Smith with the tools necessary to face the future as a leading institution of single-sex education, while at the same time dealing with the private pressures of her ailing husband.
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  • The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David K. Shipler
    National Bestseller
    "Nobody who works hard should be poor in America," writes Pulitzer Prize-winner David K. Shipler. In The Working Poor, Shipler tackles both sides of this important issue by journeying into the lives of those who perform labor essential to America's comfort yet who are trapped near the poverty line and by offering comeplling portraits of the employers struggling against low profits and competition abroad.
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  • Going Hungry
    Writers on Desire, Self-Denial, and Overcoming Anorexia

    edited by Kate Taylor

    AN ANCHOR ORIGINAL

    "Revealing.... Lends remarkable texture to a subject that has been too often sensationalized and oversimplified."
    --The New York Times

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