Houghton: 1009 books

This “stunning and intimate portrayal of four generations of New York City firefighters somehow manages to be part Alice McDermott, part Denis Leary” (Irish America). One of Book Riot’s 100 Must-Read New York City Novels Firefighters walk boldly into battle against the most capricious...

This tale of young men growing up in a working-class Michigan town without fathers to guide them is “melancholy, surreal, and funny all at once” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). The summer Michael turns seventeen, his father disappears. One by one, other men also vanish from the blue-collar...

From the national bestselling author of Red Azalea: “Extraordinary . . . Min lets [Madame Mao] be seen as never before. Bottom line: riveting” (People). In a sweeping, erotically charged story, Anchee Min creates a finely nuanced portrait of one of the most fascinating, and vilified, women...

A man searches for his wife’s lover during the Yom Kippur War, in a novel by the award-winning author hailed as the “Israeli Faulkner” (The New York Times).   In Haifa, at the dawn of Israel’s 1973 war, the lives of a middle-class garage owner named Adam, and his schoolteacher wife, Asya,...

“An impressive first novel” of a crisis between natives and colonists in Newfoundland, based on historical events (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). In 1810, David Buchan, a naval officer, arrives in the Bay of Exploits with orders to establish contact with the Beothuk, or “Red Indians,”...

A “perceptive, affectionate, and often very funny” novel about old college friends at a thirty-year reunion, by the author of The Things They Carried (Boston Herald). From a National Book Award winner who’s been called “the best American writer of his generation” (San Francisco Examiner),...

“Combines a Ruth Rendell–like psychological realism, an Agatha Christie–like plot and a Dickensian feel for life’s roulette . . . Pulse-pounding” (The Wall Street Journal). When Great War veteran Laurence Bartram arrives in Easton Deadall, he is struck by the beauty of the crumbling...

This Man Booker Prize finalist is a “splendid novel” about siblings and their very different lives in India and America (The Wall Street Journal). Uma, the plain spinster daughter of a close-knit Indian family, is trapped at home, smothered by her overbearing parents and their traditions—unlike...

This suspenseful saga of Tibet during the rise of Chinese Communism “conjures up a faraway world . . . panoramic and intimate at the same time” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times). A lively and cinematic twentieth-century epic, Red Poppies focuses on the extravagant and brutal reign...

“Here you’ll find delicious wit, quirky characters, the colorful intrigues of daily life, and certainly love and laughter. . . . Delightful.” —Jan Karon Throughout her years as schoolmistress, Miss Read has gathered excellent accounts of the rich and varied history of her beloved English...

Discover these “novels about the gentle rhythms of English village life,” as a community bands together to save their beloved local church (The New York Times). The first day of October brought an unheralded and violent storm, which whipped through the quiet English village of Fairacre,...

A rollicking look at popular culture’s most beloved sleuth: “For even the casual fan, the history of this deathless character is fascinating” (The Boston Globe). Today he is the inspiration for fiction adaptations, blockbuster movies, hit television shows, raucous Twitter banter, and...

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into key elements and ideas within classic works of literature. The latest generation of titles in this series also features glossaries and visual elements that complement the familiar format. CliffsNotes on The Great Gatsby explores F. Scott...

A scholar explores the ideas within The Lord of the Rings and the world created by J. R. R. Tolkien: “A most valuable and timely book” (Ursula K. Le Guin, Los Angeles Times–bestselling author of Changing Planes). What are millions of readers all over the world getting out of reading the...