Rabbit, Run
by John Updike | 
The Sportswriter
by Richard Ford | 
The 158-Pound Marriage
by John Irving | 
Freedom
by Jonathan Franzen | 
Rabbit Redux
by John Updike | 
I Married a Communist
by Philip Roth | 
Oracle Night
by Paul Auster | 
Couples
by John Updike | 
Cosmopolis
by Don DeLillo | 
Housekeeping
by Marilynne Robinson | 
Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner | 
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth | 
Sabbath's Theater
by Philip Roth | 
You Can't Go Home Again
by Thomas Wolfe | 
The Broom of the System
by David Foster Wallace | 
Of Mice and Men
by John Steinbeck | 
Oliver Twist
by Charles Dickens | 
Room
by Emma Donoghue | 
Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder | 
The Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner |
In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank's job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble. With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.