A devoted husband and father, fairly decent employer, and mostly honest businessman, Silas Lapham has used his father's small paint company to amass a large fortune. But he yearns to “enter society” and for his two daughters, Penelope and Irene, to marry well. However, blue-blooded Tom Corey's love for one of the Lapham daughters is thwarted by his mother, who believes Penelope is an overly independent social climber. Meanwhile, Silas's efforts...

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph; a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuumlehrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor...

"A Lot of People Live in This House follows Rachel as she arrives at the house on the hill alone as Job attends a meditation retreat in India for two weeks to unpack his own grief. She's greeted by housemates who smile, bring her cups of tea, and seem happy she's there. She hates it. Not long after, Job is trapped in India by a virus that's grounded just about every plane in the world. As she falls apart, her new housemates rally to find a way to...

Eleven-year-old asthmatic Reuben Land chronicles the Land family's odyssey in search of Reuben's older brother, Davy, who has escaped from jail before he can stand trial for the killing of two marauders who came to their Minnesota farm to harm the family.

"When seventeen-year-old Molly Gibson's widowed father remarries, her life is turned upside down by the arrival of her vain, manipulative stepmother. She also acquires an intriguing new stepsister, Cynthia, glamorous, sophisticated, and irresistible to every man she meets. The two girls begin to confide in one another and Molly soon finds herself a go-between in Cynthia's love affairs--but in doing so risks losing both her own reputation and the man...

An American police sergeant in post-World War II Germany attempts to save a family from being delivered to the Russians. The Russians claim the family is guilty of war crimes, but Charles O'Malley is skeptical that they will get a fair trial.

"Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Alice Walker's iconic modern classic is now a Penguin Book." A powerful cultural touchstone of modern American literature, The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning twenty...

"Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South is the story of Margaret Hale, the daughter of a local priest in Hampshire, whose father decides to leave his country church after a serious crisis of faith. All the events that follow happen in the fictional industrial English town named Milton to which the Hale family has moved. Thus, part of the narrative focuses on the juxtaposition between industrial areas and the countryside. Margaret is very critical of...

Winner of the 1924 Pulitzer Prize, So Big is widely regarded as Edna Ferber's crowning achievement. A rollicking panorama of Chicago's high and low life, this stunning novel follows the travails of gambler's daughter Selina Peake DeJong as she struggles to maintain her dignity, her family, and her sanity in the face of monumental challenges.

Despite her fortunate beginnings, marriage to a childhood sweetheart, and relative prosperity, Bessie Bawtry is never able to rise above her demons, as seen through the journalistic eyes of her granddaughter.