The Death of the Heart is perhaps Elizabeth Bowen's best-known book. As she deftly and delicately exposes the cruelty that lurks behind the polished surfaces of conventional society, Bowen reveals herself as a masterful novelist who combines a sense of humor with a devastating gift for divining human motivations. In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the thirties, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous...

On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline,...

An Englishwoman falls for an older man who takes her to France where she discovers he is already married. When she leaves him, he pursues her and confines her to a lunatic asylum in Germany. But she will escape. The novel was written in 1866 and was rejected by the publisher as too sensational.

The final novel by Charles Dickens, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood", was unfinished at the time of his death in 1870. The novel revolves around John Jasper, choirmaster and opium addict, who is the guardian of his orphaned nephew Edwin Drood. Before the death of his parents, Edwin was promised to marry Rosa Bud, another orphan, but their affections have cooled upon reaching adulthood. Rosa has also attracted the affections of Jasper, her teacher, as...

"A couple who broke up months ago make a pact to pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry. Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college--they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now--for reasons they're still not discussing--they don't. They broke...

Elfride Swancourt is the daughter of the Rector of Endelstow, a remote sea-swept parish in Corwall based on St Juliot, where Hardy began A Pair of Blue Eyes during the beginning of his courtship of his first wife, Emma. Blue-eyed and high-spirited, Elfride has little experience of the world beyond, and becomes entangled with two men: the boyish architect, Stephen Smith, and the older literary man, Henry Knight. The former friends become rivals, and...

"She may be strong, but she's not unbreakable. July Tate is a force to be reckoned with-a big, strong blond with a heart the size of her whole town--but beneath her capable exterior lie the scars of a devastating lost love. To July, love equals vulnerability, and she can't afford either. Joe Anderson knew from the first moment he saw her that July was The One. Now, after years apart, he's back, driven by the need to explain his disappearance. In search...

Unlike the other Birthmothers in her utopian community, teenaged Claire forms an attachment to her baby, feeling a great loss when he is taken to the Nurturing Center to be adopted by a family unit.

"Ghost meets The Bold Type in this sparkling adult debut about a disillusioned millennial ghostwriter who, quite literally, has some ghosts of her own, from nationally bestselling author Ashley Poston. Florence Day is a ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem-after a terrible break-up, she no longer believes in love. It's as good as dead. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man,...

For many years, Alice Walker has been known for her outspoken positions against racism, sexism, and colonialism. Now, she takes her crusade into the midst of her fiction, as her protagonist (greatly resembling herself) sheds the burdens and blessings of her past to come to terms with an actuality heightened by the transcendental images of magical realism. To be purified, she must go down two rivers. First, there's the Colorado, where she takes an...