The Russian Girl
by Kingsley Amis | 
Angels
by Denis Johnson | 
The Shadow of the Sun
by A. S. Byatt | 
Wickford Point
by John P. Marquand | 
A Fool's Alphabet
by Sebastian Faulks | 
Strong Motion
by Jonathan Franzen | 
Harnessing Peacocks
by Mary Wesley | 
When I Was Five I Killed Myself
by Howard Buten | 
Legacy of Silence
by Belva Plain | 
Lonely Road
by Nevil Shute |
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee
by Rebecca Miller | 
Ultimate Prizes
by Susan Howatch | 
The Rise of Life on Earth
by Joyce Carol Oates | 
Blue Movie
by Terry Southern | 
Turn of the Century
by Kurt Andersen |
God's Pocket
by Pete Dexter | 
Take Me With You
by Catherine Ryan Hyde | 
Empire Falls
by Richard Russo |
Anne of Windy Poplars
by Lucy Maud Montgomery | 
The Sense of an Ending
by Julian Barnes |
Warren Spooner was born after a prolonged delivery in a makeshift delivery room in a doctor's office in Milledgeville, Georgia, on the first Saturday of December, 1956. His father died shortly afterward, long before Spooner had even a memory of his face, and was replaced eventually by a once-brilliant young naval officer, Calmer Ottosson, recently court-martialed out of service. This is the story of the lifelong tie between the two men, poles apart, of Spooner's troubled childhood, troubled adolescence, violent and troubled adulthood and Calmer Ottosson's inexhaustible patience, undertaking a life-long struggle to salvage his step-son, a man he will never understand.