The Casualty
by Heinrich Boll | 
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 | 
We Were the Mulvaneys
by Joyce Carol Oates | 
Everyman
by Philip Roth | 
The Book of Ruth
by Jane Hamilton | 
South of Broad
by Pat Conroy | 
Old School
by Tobias Wolff | 
The Risk Pool
by Richard Russo | 
Drop City
by T. Coraghessan Boyle | 
Fathers and Forefathers
by Slobodan Selenic | 
The Children Act
by Ian McEwan |
End of a Mission, written in 1968, finds Heinrich Boll trying to come to terms with his country's monstrous past in an investigation of an inexplicable crime and an even more absurd trial. Told to rack up mileage on a jeep to prepare it for inspection, a soldier drives it home--and burns it in the company of his complaisant father. Boll's account of the testimony and background of the witnesses, and their nonplussed response to the composure and satisfaction of the accused, illuminates the life of an insignificant town caught up in sudden, unreasonable importance.