The Turmoil
by Booth Tarkington | 
The Eyes of the World
by Harold Bell Wright | 
Samedi the Deafness
by Jesse Ball | 
Wolf In White Van
by John Darnielle | 
The Subject Steve
by Sam Lipsyte | 
Trumpet
by Jackie Kay | 
Ordinary Love and Good Will
by Jane Smiley | 
Lost in the Forest
by Sue Miller | 
The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
by Elinor Lipman | 
The Invisible Circus
by Jennifer Egan | 
An Inconvenient Woman
by Dominick Dunne | 
The Wilder Sisters
by Jo-Ann Mapson | 
Walking on Water
by Richard Paul Evans | 
The Path of Minor Planets
by Andrew Sean Greer | 
Marazan
by Nevil Shute | 
Compass Rose
by John Casey | 
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 |
From the winner of the 1989 National Book Award (for Spartina), a major new novel--wise, sad, and richly comic--about the meltdown of a marriage against the backdrop of a gloriously awful congressional campaign. Charlottesville, Virginia, 1978: Mike is a successful forty-something lawyer, a onetime congressional staffer who's had it with Washington; Joss, his wife, is a filmmaker. They're Virginia liberals with a clan of close-knit friends--a bright, edgy, flirty, games-playing group, spinning like a Catherine wheel around Mike and Joss. But the sparks that fly between the two are getting hotter and more dangerous, as Joss' restlessness turns to impatience and then anger. When one of the group introduces them all to the woman he wants to marry, things suddenly explode--this new arrival and Joss fall passionately in love, and their whole world careens out of control. What ensues is tragicomedy, as Mike tries to allay his rage and misery by letting himself get sucked into a trial run for a seat in Congress. He wants to be a hero to someone; instead he becomes the unwitting star of a political farce. Meantime, Joss is struggling with her new life, and their two young daughters (who form a lovingly unmerciful Greek chorus commenting on the action) have to navigate a turmoil in which one parent is a public joke and the other a private scandal. Rarely has the undoing of love been chronicled with such large-hearted humanity.