Crusoe's Daughter
by Jane Gardam | 
Faith Fox
by Jane Gardam | 
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 | 
Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson | 
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by David Eggers | 
2666
by Roberto Bolano | 
Buying the Farm
by Kimberly Conn | 
Flight Behavior
by Barbara Kingsolver | 
Harbor of the Heart
by Katherine Spencer | 
The Book of Ruth
by Jane Hamilton | 
Everyman
by Philip Roth | 
We Were the Mulvaneys
by Joyce Carol Oates | 
Old School
by Tobias Wolff | 
South of Broad
by Pat Conroy | 
Men in the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories
by Ghassan Kanafani | 
The Wake Up
by Catherine Ryan Hyde | 
The Risk Pool
by Richard Russo |
With the birth of her baby brother, eight-year-old Margaret Marsh is banished from the house every Wednesday afternoon to enjoy the idyllic English seaside-at peace between the world wars-with the family's new, young, and bawdy maid. Largely ignored, the child has all the freedom she needs to observe and quietly condemn the adults around her. Gardam's novel, originally published in the UK in 1978, offers a searing blend of upended morals, delayed salvation, and emotional purgatory, especially where love and sex are concerned. Margaret's mother, Elinor, begins to lose the faith thrust upon her by her zealot husband, who is bent on the conversion of the young maid, despite protest from both women. How perfect, then, that Mrs. Marsh's childhood sweetheart should return to town and provide a decidedly secular contrast to her saintly husband. After a pivotal tea party, everyone hurtles toward inevitable tragedy, with Gardam's intricate prose and keen divining of human nature driving the action.