Ali and Nino has been hailed as one of the enduring romantic novels of the century. Ali Khan is an Islamic boy from Azerbaijan with his ancestors' passion for the desert and warrior legends, but his lover Nino, a beautiful Christian girl from Georgia, is the child with a more European sensibility. The lovers spend their days in Baku on the edge of the Caspian sea. But it is here in a city where Orient and Occident collide, that they are inevitably caught up in the events of the First World War and the Russian Revolution. Both must confront the divided world that surrounds them as well as their own deepest needs.
Set before and during the Great War, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen Wraysford, a young Englishman who journeys to France on business in 1910 and becomes so entangled in a passionate clandestine love affair that he never returns home. Stephen finds a place and an intense camaraderie in this tortuous world, and through his eyes Faulks reveals not only the unspeakable carnage [of WWI] but the unexpected love and loyalty that took place in the fields of France a mere two generations ago.
“This monumental novel is set at the end of the Civil War and follows the journey of a wounded Confederate soldier named Inman as he returns home. Interwoven is the story of Ada, the woman he loves.” Library Journal
A timeless, funny, resplendent novel about romance and adolescence, and how people lived and died in a small Southern town at the turn of the century.
"Heartbreaking, beautiful and deeply moving ... de Bernieres's extraordinary novel is based on a historic episode: the Nazis' occupation of the sleepy Greek island of Cephallonia and their slaughter of thousands of occupying Italian troops who turned against fascism in solidarity with the native Greeks." Publishers Weekly
Set against the tumultuous years of the Post-Napoleonic era, Dumas's grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantes, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason. The story of his long imprisonment, dramatic escape, and carefully wrought revenge offers up a vision of France that has become immortal.
A sweeping portrait of an unconventional woman carving her own destiny in an era defined by violence, passion, and adventure.
Gone
with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
A monumental classic considered by many to be not only the greatest love
story ever written, but also the greatest Civil War saga.
In a brilliantly original novel, four people come together in a deserted Italian villa during the final moments of World War II: a young American nurse and her horribly burned English patient, an American soldier of fortune, and an Indian soldier in the British army. Their stories of the past and of the present weave a spellbinding tapestry of how lives are caught and changed by the circumstances of war.
I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"--and the heart of the reader--in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.
In early nineteenth-century England, an orphaned young woman accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall, a country estate owned by the mysteriously remote Mr. Rochester.
Leaping Man Hill tells the story of Abel, an impish, mute child; of Mary Catherine, whose eccentricities trigger new spirit in him; and of Henny, a World War I veteran. These and other characters come to life amid Emshwiller's rich country landscape.
Lovely
Bones, Alice Sebold
When we first meet Susie Salmon, she is already in heaven. As she looks
down from this strange new place, she tells us, in the fresh and spirited
voice of a fourteen-year-old girl, a tale that is both haunting and full
of hope.
Patty Jane's House of Curl is an easy-to-read, joyous and funny story of a family of women, the tragedies in their lives, the strengths they find within themselves, and their ultimate victories. It follows the lives of two wacky Minnesota sisters, Patty Jane and Harriet, in a female Lake Wobegon where humor and hope overcome life's trials.
Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. Her account of her African adventures … is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century.”
Peony:
a novel of China, Pearl S. Buck
Peony, a valued servant for a wealthy Chinese merchant family, falls in
love with the oldest son.
When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as 'a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action'. She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment and a future as constricted as 'a dark narrow alley with a dead wall at the end'. In a conclusion that is one of the most moving in modern fiction, Isabel makes her final choice.
The novel [for which Byatt won England's prestigious Booker Prize] traces a pair of young academics—Roland Michell and Maud Bailey—as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.
Rebecca,
Daphne DuMaurier
First
published in 1938, this classic gothic novel is such a compelling read
that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century. It is the
story of the second Mrs. De Winter, who realizes that her husband married
her for her youth and warmth, hoping to use her as a shield against his
first wife’s malignant presence -- a lingering evil that threatens
to destroy them both from beyond the grave.
The Red Tent is the story of Jacob's daughter, Dinah, and Jacob's four wives. As Diamant explores the trials and triumphs of ancient women, she brings a foreign yet beautiful world to life as seen through the emotional filter of Dinah's eyes. This lush, evocative tale brings new life to the Old Testament.
The Dashwood sisters are very different from each other in appearance and temperament; Elinor's good sense and readiness to observe social forms contrast with Marianne's impulsive candor and warm but excessive sensibility. Both struggle to maintain their integrity and find happiness in the face of a competitive marriage market.
A third-rate newspaperman returns to his ancestral coastal home in Newfoundland with his elderly aunt and two daughters and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery, despite the unpredictable forces of nature and society.
Women In Love delves into the mysteries between men and women as two couples strive for love against a haunting backdrop of coal mines, factories, and a beleaguered working class.