"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 immensely popular bestseller upon its publication in 1905, The House of Mirth was Edith Wharton's first great novel. Set among the elegant brownstones of New York City and opulent country houses like gracious Bellomont on the Hudson, the novel creates a satiric portrayal of what Wharton herself called "a society of irresponsib- le pleasure-seekers" with a precision comparable to that of Proust. And her brilliant and complex characterization of...

"E.M. Forster's most admired novel--the one that gave us his famous injunction, 'Only connect'--revolves around the troubled legacy of an English country house named Howards End. The old house holds significance of differing kinds for the characters whose lives are connected by it: the sweetly frail Ruth Wilcox, who longs to leave Howards End to someone who will love it as she does; her snobbish and materialistic husband and sons, who ignore her dying...

Anna Oh, a middle-aged wife, mother and artist, divorces her husband after 27 years of marriage to marry Vivica, the Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.

This is the story of a middle-class family living in the industrialized "midland country" at the turn of the 20th century. It is against this dingy backdrop that Alice Adams seeks to distinguish herself. She goes to a dance in a used dress, which her mother attempts to renew by changing the lining and adding some lace. She adorns herself not with orchids sent by the florist but with a bouquet of violets she has picked herself. Because her family cannot...

A stunning debut novel from a new voice in literary fiction, set on Lake Michigan following World War II, The Water Dancers limns the divide between the worlds of the wealthy elite "summer people" and the poor native population who serve them–and what happens when those worlds collide.

When Rachel Winnapee first comes to work at the March family summer home on vast and beautiful Lake Michigan, she quickly learns her place.

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A powerful first novel about a family that slips from fortune's favor and a town broken by the forces of modernity. Across a bend of Ontario's Attawan River lies the Island, a working-class neighborhood of whitewashed houses and vine-freighted fences, black willows and decaying sheds. Here, for generations, the Walkers have lived among the other mill workers. The family's troubles begin in the summer of 1965, when a union organizer comes to town...

Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G.H. are an older couple, it's their house, and they've arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the...

A New York Times Notable Book. "[An] engaging and keenly particular story of a watchful little girl caught at a fateful historical crossroads." —The Seattle Times
During the First World War, ten-year-old Alice Moore is left in the care of her autocratic grandmother at Ballydavid, a lovely country house in County Waterford. Living in a rigid, old-fashioned household where propriety is all, Alice is forced to piece together...

"A coming-of-age story set in post-independence Sri Lanka"--