"Middlemarch" is writer George Eliot's crowning literary achievement and the novel is considered by many critics to be one of the finest pieces of fiction ever written. Written in the style of "realism" popular at the time, it is a study of the class and social structure of the fictional town of Middlemarch in central England and the story touches on all segments of life within the village, from the landed gentry to the working class and everyone...

James Joyce's novel Ulysses is said to be one of the most important works in Modernist literature. It details Leopold Bloom's passage through Dublin on an ordinary day: June 16, 1904. Causing controversy, obscenity trials and heated debates, Ulysses is a pioneering work that brims with puns, parodies, allusions, stream-of-consciousness writing and clever structuring. Modern Library ranked it as number one on its list of the twentieth

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On a charming cul-de-sac in suburban Connecticut, three close-knit couples find their long-cherished harmony undone when a lovely, younger neighbor, widowed a year ago and presumably still unattached, turns up pregnant. Who is the father? Could it be one of the husbands? One by one, the couples turn inward, taking stock of their marriages and of the loyalties that perhaps have been taken too much for granted. In each case, this close scrutiny reveals...

The moving story of a mother and son that touches the deepest concerns about love, art, family, and life. Lily Maynard is proud, chilly, difficult, and has become a famous writer at age seventy-two. Now, stricken with Parkinson's disease and staying with her architect son Alan, Lily must cope with her fading powers as well as with disturbing memories of the events that estranged her from her children and ended her marriage. For Alan, her visit raises...

From National Book Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author Louise Erdrich, a profound and enchanting new novel: a richly imagined world "where butchers sing like angels." Having survived World War I, Fidelis Waldvogel returns to his quiet German village and marries the pregnant widow of his best friend, killed in action. With a suitcase full of sausages and a master butcher's precious knife set, Fidelis sets out for America. In Argus, North...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Red Hat Club comes a hilarious story of marriage and love and second chances When Elizabeth Mooney escaped the shame of her "white trash" family to marry the crown prince of her small town, Howell Whittington, she never dreamed that thirty years later, she'd end up trapped in a loveless marriage to the cruel banker who's foreclosing on all her friends. Then Howe has a stroke sitting up in church,...