Some Matchless Mainstream Fiction
Discover a curated list of matchless mainstream fiction books that stand out in the literary world. Explore timeless stories and unforgettable reads for every book lover.
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The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
Leo Gursky taps his radiator each evening to let his upstairs neighbor know he's still alive. But it wasn't always like this: in the Polish village of his youth, he fell in love and wrote a book. . . . Sixty years later and half a world away, fourteen-year-old Alma, who was named after a character in that book, undertakes an adventure to find her namesake and save her family. With virtuosic skill and soaring imaginative power, Nicole Krauss gradually draws these stories together toward a climax of "extraordinary depth and beauty" (Newsday).
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The Last Days of Dogtown
by Anita Diamant
Based loosely on a true story of a historic community, this novel is set on Cape Ann in the early 1800s. Peopled with widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, free Africans, and "witches," it resurrects a forgotten sector of society.
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Until I Find You
by John Irving
Chronicles the life and times of actor Jack Burns, whose unique bond with his mother, Alice, a Toronto tattoo artist, and their search for his missing father, William, shapes his relationships with women and his Hollywood career.
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Light from Heaven
by Jan Karon
In the final volume in the phenomenally successful Mitford Years ties up all the loose ends of Father Timothy Kavanagh's deeply affecting life. The novel is filled with old and new characters and the answers to questions readers have asked since the series began nearly a decade ago.
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The Sea
by John Banville
Following the death of his wife, Max Morden retreats to the seaside town of his childhood summers, where his own life becomes inextricably entwined with the members of the vacationing Grace family.
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Tangerine Dream
by Ken Douglas
Best friends Haley and Taylor must deal with a terrible loss when Taylor's twin sister, Dylan, is killed in a car crash. Meanwhile, Taylor and Dylan's father, a senator running for president and supposedly somewhere on the campaign trail, can't be reached because he is in the arms of a prostitute. While the girls and the twins' mother try to recover and avoid the press in New Zealand, Nick Nesbitt, a television news reporter, senses a story and will stop at nothing to get it.
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The Zahir
by Paulo Coelho
When his war correspondent wife goes missing with a friend who may be a lover, a celebrity novelist comes under suspicion, until the friend reappears and invites him to undertake a spiritual journey to Kazakhstan. By the author of Eleven Minutes. 100,000 first printing.
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Flashman on the March
by George MacDonald Fraser
It's 1868 and Sir Harry Flashman, V.C., arch-cad, amorist, cold-hearted soldier, and reluctant hero, is back in the 12th book in Fraser's ever-beloved Flashman Papers series.
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Wickett's Remedy
by Myla Goldberg
The triumphant follow-up to the bestselling "Bee Season," is a novel about the dream of progress--personal, scientific, commercial, and cultural--featuring a charming heroine whose desire for a better life comes up against the sweep of history.
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The Time Traveler's Wife
by Audrey Niffenegger
A Magical love story that is as sad as it is joyous.
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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic—both poignant and funny—about a boy with autism who sets out to solve the murder of a neighbor's dog and discovers unexpected truths about himself and the world. “Disorienting and reorienting the reader to devastating effect.... Suspenseful and harrowing.” —The New York Times Book Review Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow. This improbable story of Christopher's quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.
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Brokeback Mountain
by Annie Proulx
"Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working a sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer." "Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it."--BOOK JACKET.
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The Dew Breaker
by Edwidge Danticat
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A "brilliant book, undoubtedly the best one yet by an enormously talented writer” (The Washington Post Book World), about love, remorse, and hope; of personal and political rebellions; and of the compromises we make to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. In this award-winning, bestselling work of fiction that moves between Haiti in the 1960s and New York in the present day, we meet an unusual man who is harboring a vital, dangerous secret. He is a quiet man, a good father and husband, a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, a landlord and barber with a terrifying scar across his face. As the book unfolds, we enter the lives of those around him, and his secret is slowly revealed. Edwidge Danticat’s brilliant exploration of the “dew breaker”—or torturer—is an unforgettable story from one of America’s most essential writers.
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The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The New York Times bestseller “The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero.” —Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice) “One gorgeous read.” —Stephen King Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julián Carax. But when he sets out to find the author’s other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax’s books in existence. Soon Daniel’s seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona’s darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
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The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell
by Loraine Despres
Belle Cantrell goes to jail in 1920s Louisiana after swimming in her bloomers with a group of suffragettes, killing her husband of sixteen years, and engaging in other tumultuous activities that transform her home community.
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Beyond the Blonde
by Kathleen Flynn-Hui
"A young woman from rural New Hampshire is thrust into the world of New York's hottest hair salon, tending to socialites and actresses, models and moguls"--Provided by publisher.
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The Starter Wife
by Gigi Levangie Grazer
When Gracie's husband unceremoniously dumps her (by cell phone) mere months before their ten-year anniversary and takes up with a famous pop starlet, she finds herself reeling.
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Hot Flash Holidays
by Nancy Thayer
When the Hot Flash friends gather at the spa to trim the Christmas tree, they share steaming mugs of hot chocolate, a few laughs, and a vow to make this holiday one to remember.
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Cotton
by Christopher P. Wilson
Lee Cotton was born of interracial parentage and will have a hard time figuring out which world he can live in comfortably-black or white. His travels and adventures lead him all over the world and he gets to see people and events through his diverse personality and experiences.